


Vices and Virtues

by StopLookingHere



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Cigarettes, Coming of Age, Drug Use, Erwin Smith is a police officer, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mild Smut, References to Depression, Underage Smoking, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-05-20 17:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 23,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6018121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopLookingHere/pseuds/StopLookingHere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For we all have our vices, and yet we would rather display our virtues. Levi Ackerman is on the cusp of adulthood, struggling to live in a house with heroin addicted parents. Hange Zoe is a closet nerd, drifting in and out of the social politics of high school, never quite having a friend but having everything else. When Levi and Hange meet one particularly rough night, a friendship sparks, and a little more... until soon, reality catches up and they have to make a decision: can they leave the life they're most comfortable with for something better, or will it be the end for them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. smoke and vodka

**Author's Note:**

> I started this a long-ass time ago and am just now updating it again, haha.
> 
> Here's my second novel-length fic for Levi and Hange. I love writing about these two. I hope you enjoy it too.
> 
> Do you remember when people on other fanfiction sites tried to have an updating schedule? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

If not for the nicotine, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle today. Thanksgiving was always just a peachy event in which he remembered what normalcy was, a memory that dug in his heart like a curved iron claw. The stick between his fingers was not something he was happy with depending on, yet here he was, clinging to the only consistent thing of that day. Unfortunately, the cigarette was almost finished.

There was a scratching at the screen door which prompted him to open it, the animal on the other side shooting like a bullet out of the house. He vaguely saw the orange ball of fluff he lovingly called “shit” most of the time dark into the bushes, off to do whatever it was that cats do when they feel the need to escape.

Before the door can slam shut, someone’s foot stops it. A rough voice, a pocked arm snakes through the door and offers him another cigarette. He pauses before accepting it, kicking the door shut as soon as the hand leaves in frustration. His own mother would give him the thing that would kill him, of course. It was such a filthy habit that he was surprised he even took it up, yet it made days like these bearable. He supposed that he was willing to give up his own little obsessive-compulsive ideas for something to quiet them.

He pockets the cigarette instead of lighting it, throwing his dad’s expensive silver zip-o into his pocket. He wouldn’t miss it, especially today. Then he grinds the old cigarette down into the glass dish that’s already overflowing with them (only half of them are his, he swears) and thrusts open the door.

His house is always kind of dark, which irritates him more than the fact that he willingly smokes cigarettes. One can’t clean properly in the dark, but it wasn’t like he was going to keep this house clean to begin with. He followed the wood-paneled halls until he found his own room, popping in for a moment to put on a shirt and grab his wallet and knife. In the bathroom, he carefully avoided the needle on the floor, picking it up with a piece of toilet paper and depositing it in the waste basket. He took his shaver from the medicine cabinet, touched up the back of his head, and shut the light.

“I’m going out,” he announced to nobody in particular. His mother sat on the couch in a comatose state, the reason sitting next to her in a display of poor hygiene. He didn’t bother to sweep this needle anywhere, just rather made a careful note to avoid the couch for a while.

The sun was starting to set finally on this Thanksgiving, another day out of three hundred and sixty five that he was stuck here. There was three hundred and sixty five plus about another month more before he could finally stop coming here, finally change his name from this godforsaken name, and finally go do whatever he wanted with his life. Maybe then he’d finally be happy.

His car was a purring beauty, his pride and joy wrapped into a four-door thing which he had replaced nearly everything in. For three hundred bucks, he couldn’t have asked for anything better, and now it was a kind of project that he invested into when something broke but otherwise it was fine. It took him out of the apartment complexes of suburbia and into the country area where things were quieter, to the end of the lane where he knew that the seemingly quiet house at the end was going to be bustling. Maybe he’d loose himself in liquid courage or score some girl (or even a guy, it had happened) he hoped.

The first sign that something was wrong was when he had to let himself into the house, and there was nobody he recognized on the ground floor. There was the usual shenanigans with drinking here, but it wasn’t what he was looking for. He was looking for the small group of people with liquids better than cheap beer and hangover-inducing mixed drinks, who he always managed to score something out of in the end.

His feet took him upstairs, nearly knocking over a red cup of whatever liquid that someone had set there and forgotten. He poked his head into different rooms, some containing some eye candy and some not, until he came to the room that they were usually in. The scent was what first hit him, something so like home he nearly gagged.

Nobody really responded to him entering the room, sending another wave of nausea sliding over him. He carefully navigated over the people until he found the stupid orange recycling bag that they always kept goods in, extracting the bottle of vodka from it and looking around. Still, nobody noticed he was here. He made his way to leave until a voice from the corner made him jump.

“Grab and leave?” It’s a rough voice, neither feminine nor male yet definitely not doped out like the rest of the room. “Or are you that Ackerman guy they were talking about?”

He turned to face the voice, hidden in a closet with a… he couldn’t believe it, a DS in their hand? The sound of the Pokémon battle theme came faintly from the glowing aqua device, and he felt a need to smack it from their hands. Still, he resisted, giving them an affirmative nod.

“Cool,” the person said, snapping the DS shut and climbing out of the closet in one fluid motion. They were actually quite tall, nearly a foot above him. In the dim light he could see they had silver-framed glasses on and dark hair tied up in a simple high ponytail, their clothing simple and their stance the kind of lanky one that came with people not being sure what to do with themselves. “Let’s go.”


	2. helicopters and selfies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you aren't a native English speaker and aren't familiar with the term "helicopter parent"... it means to have a parent who is constantly watching over your every movement who leaves you no privacy or independence. It's very commonly called "strict" instead.

_They were actually quite tall, nearly a foot above him. In the dim light he could see they had silver-framed glasses on and dark hair tied up in a simple high ponytail, their clothing simple and their stance the kind of lanky one that came with people not being sure what to do with themselves. “Let’s go.”_

* * *

 

“Let’s?” he asked, staring at her.

“They told me to watch over them ‘cause I didn’t want any of that stuff. Nasty. You’re sober, you’re not into this, and I’m bored,” the tall person explained. “Also, you have a valuable bottle in your hand.”

He watches them. “Fine. I’m only walking out to the lake, though.”

They shrug. “I don’t mind. The name’s Zoe Hange, by the way. But call me Hange, ‘cause Zoe’s too… dunno.”

They navigate their way through the throngs of people in the house, squeezing outside into the cool autumn night air and making their way down to the lake. He’s used this path so often that he doesn’t need a flashlight, especially with the moonlight washing everything out into different shades of monochrome. The lake itself was a deep amethyst, the stones surrounding it various shades of dark slate and in between, an area of them cleared out around an ashy bonfire pit.

He took his knife from his pocket, cutting the seal around the alcohol and uncapping it, flipping the knife back into its safe position and slipping it into his pocket. He offered the bottle of Hange, who grabbed it and held up a finger. They sat down at the edge of the bonfire pit, the edges of their sneakers curling into the long-dead ashes.

“Wait, first, I want to know the name of the guy I’m accepting alcohol from,” they said.

He rolled his eyes. “Levi Ackerman.” As an afterthought he added, “What are your pronouns, Hange?”

Hange looked surprised even in the dim light. “She. I’m female. I don’t like being very feminine, but I’m female. Thanks for asking.”

Levi merely nodded. Hange tipped the bottle back, her face contorting as the alcohol burnt her throat. She gasped, wiped the mouth of the bottle with her sleeve, and passed him the bottle.

Alcohol was one of those vices, like cigarettes, that he found himself engaging in more and more frequently as his parents got more and more into their own lives and away from his. While the liquid burnt his throat and made his eyes water, it was nothing compared to the pain he felt while he watched them waste away. That was the kind of pain that brought water to his eyes even without alcohol.

“You look sad,” Hange observes. She pulls her phone from her pocket and opens an app that blinds them with a yellow glow, taking a quick picture of the lake and flashing her screen towards Levi. It’s quite a good picture, actually. She certainly has an eye for photography.

“Nice,” he mumbles.

Instead of darkening her phone, she taps a couple places and then aims the lens at him, blinding him with the harsh flash. Giggling, she shows him the photo, where he’s looking fairly grumpy with a bottle in one hand and a rock in another.

“Oy,” he interjects. “That’s a shitty angle.”

“But of course, a shitty angle does not mean a bad picture,” she tells him between giggles. “Besides, how else could I confuse my friends about what I do when I’m not with them?”

Levi raises an eyebrow at that. “By the way, why were you in a closet playing Pokémon at a house party?”

Hange sighed and laid back against the lake stones, the moon illuminating her body and face. She closes her eyes. “Sometimes I try to go out and be social, except I’d rather be inside reading or something useful. Most of the time I just want to get away.”

“From?” He asks.

“Helicopter parents,” she grimaces and takes off her glasses, folding them neatly and setting them on top of her DS. “They think I’m at Petra’s, which I was, but Petra’s covering for me like a saint. We even took selfies in our pajamas before I left.”

“Why don’t you spend the night with Petra?” Levi inquires, remembering the honey-haired girl who almost always led discussions in his English classes. “She’s nice.”

Hange beckons for him to pass her the bottle, taking another drink from it and twisting her face up so her eyebrows form a caterpillar under the moonlight. “I love Petra, but I am sick of being inside. It’s the only way I can get out. Petra’s my best friend though, so we cover for each other in more ways than just this.”

“Okay,” he answers. He takes the bottle from her, takes another burning drink from it, and caps it for later. They’ve somehow managed to drink half the bottle together, and he’s got a nice humming at the back of his head that shuts his inner self out.

“Why are you here?” She asks him, sitting back up and fumbling with her hair. “I mean, you’re not doped up on whatever they were on back there, so why?”

Levi sighs. “What does it say for a straight-A student to come to a party to begin with, let alone get vodka? I can forget myself here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hange's literally 10x easier to write as a female.


	3. hugs and keys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> about as short as I am, to be honest.

_Levi sighs. “What does it say for a straight-A student to come to a party to begin with, let alone get vodka? I can forget myself here.”_

* * *

 

Hange watches him curiously as he surveys the area for any people around. He sits oddly, his knees tucked up to his chest loosely and his arms wound around his ankles. He’s lost all the confidence he struts in the hallways of school, it seems.

“My parents are kind of annoying too,” he sighs and seems to sink further into himself. “They got caught up in the same shit as those guys. Still caught up in it, actually. It makes me sick to see them into it now.”

“What is it?” She inquires softly. “You looked sick in there.”

He mumbles something, prompting her to ask him to repeat it. “Heroin,” he declares louder, his voice tinged with anger as the grip around his legs tightens. “Heroin and its nasty shit and I swear if you fucking tell anyone—“

“Chill,” Hange shrugged, finally fixing her ponytail correctly. “You’re not in it. That’s good.”

He relaxes again at her nonchalance. “Sorry, I just have a really strong aversion to things…”

“It’s no problem,” she tells him, scooting her body so she’s next to him. She throws her arms around him, making his eyes snap wide open.

He stares up, her eyes closed and a small grin on her face as she grips him. “What are you doing?” He asks.

“Hugging you,” she replies, opening her eyes and staring down at him. “You looked like you needed a hug.”

Levi just stares at her, half not wanting her to stop as her warmth is quite nice compared to the cool night autumn air. After a while, she clumsily springs up. “Woah.”

Before Levi can think, he’s in a half sit, half stand stance, catching the taller girl before she hits the stones. “Dumbass,” he hisses.

“I forgot you get hella drunk off vodka,” she laughs. “Too deep of a conversation for vodka, shorty.”

He makes a noise of irritation, his own head spinning too. He sets her on her feet, where she unsteadily totters. Grabbing her stuff from the ground, he shoves it into her hands and picks her up in one swift move.  She lets out a whoop as they make their way back to the house, stopping at his car.

“Listen, you sleep in the back, I’m not driving like this,” he tells her, depositing her there and running around the other side of the car to unlock the trunk. He comes back with a pillow and blankets in his arms, only to find the door closed.

“Hange,” he calls. “Can you open the door?”

There’s only giggles from the inside. “Nope.”

He juggles the bedding in one hand, trying the handle of the car with his other. Locked. Of course, his key sits in his right pocket and he can vaguely hear it clack against the silver zippo. Yet, he feels like humoring her in this state they’re stuck in.

“Damnit Hange, my key’s inside,” he allows fake anger into his voice. “I’d like to sleep, y’know.”

Yet, it doesn’t take long for her to spring from the seat of his car and unlock the door in a hurry. He hands her one of the blankets and the pillow, shutting the door behind him and soon making a cozy place in the passenger seat. He stows the half-finished bottle of vodka in the compartment between the two seats, hiding it under a tissue box and several pieces of notebook paper from school. He’s nearly asleep when he hears it.

“Are you mad at me?” Comes a tiny voice from the back seat. He turns his head to see her bleary eyes peeking out at him from under the blanket.

“No,” he tells her. For a moment, the idea passes through his head that he might have scared her.

“Okay,” she sounds a little better now and closes her eyes, snuggling deeper into the blanket. “Thanks for letting me sleep here.  I won’t puke in your car.”

“Yeah,” he can’t tell her how glad he is to hear her promise she won’t puke. “No problem.”


	4. clammy and cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> double update w00t.

“Okay,” she sounds a little better now and closes her eyes, snuggling deeper into the blanket. “Thanks for letting me sleep here.  I won’t puke in your car.”

“Yeah,” he can’t tell her how glad he is to hear her promise she won’t puke. “No problem.”

* * *

 

Levi’s woken up by the weakening rays of autumn dawn and the noise of something splattering against the ground not far from his car. He turns in a panic to see Hange’s missing, glancing outside his back window to see her lanky figure bent over against a tree. Well, she said she wouldn’t puke _in_ his car.

He’s not sure how old the bottle of water in his glove compartment is, but it’s unopened, so it’ll do. He grabs his trusty tin of breath mints and greets her by handing the water to the brunette haired figure, who chugs half of it in one go.

“Thank you,” she spits onto the ground. “Not in your car,” she reminds him with a lazy grin.

“Yeah, not in my car,” he surveys the area around them, noticing the only cars left are the ones that belong to his friends. “Listen, I need to check on my friends inside, see if they’re alright…”

She nods. “Do that. I’ll come with you, if it’s okay. I need to call Petra anyways and my phone’s dead.”

They follow the paver brick path to the house and across the front porch, trying the door and noticing it’s unlocked. They let themselves in, seeing the usual trashing of a house that comes with a party. The way to the stairs is mostly uninterrupted though, so they climb up.

“I’m going to be an asshole,” Levi warns Hange. “I do this a lot for them. If you want to help, start screaming at people if they’re in the rooms. They need to get out.”

Hange’s eyes widen with excitement and she thrusts open the door closest to her. Levi carries on with significantly less enthusiasm, throwing each door he finds open and barking at them to cover any important parts that might be showing. A blushing couple from one of Hange’s doors comes running past him, his shirt on her backwards.

When they reach the room with all of Levi’s friends, he opens it gently and pokes his head in, only to shut the door quickly.

Hange looks at Levi’s face, curious to why he shut the door. He’s deathly pale and has the same sick look on his face that she saw him first wearing when they met. “Hold on, I got it,” she tells him as she pushes past him and opens the door again.

She kind of regrets opening the door. There’s a growing smell of decay in here and she’s about ninety-nine percent sure that having blue fingernails is not a good sign. Still, she continues inside, stepping over party debris and dirty clothing from whoever inhabits this room to feel the pulse of one person passed out against the side of the bed. She removes her hand sharply.

“Levi,” her voice is steadier than she expects. “Call the police. Call the police.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I quite dislike the idea that Levi is fearless in all situations and is never shook by the sights of life. In the Survey Corps, he has had quite a bit of experience with the daily sights of his job so he's not really fazed by death anymore. However, as a high school student, death wouldn't be something he'd have encountered so-- he has a purely human reaction to it.  
> i'm going too into detail lel.


	5. porch swings and Smith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> funny story: my English teacher wants to read my writing.

“Levi,” her voice is steadier than she expects. “Call the police. Call the police.”

* * *

 

“What?” He asks her, the reality of their situation not quite through his head yet. He creeps into the bedroom behind her, his face somehow growing even paler as he realizes what has happened. He swears quietly before bolting outside of the room, his face a sickly shade of green.

Hange searches the room, noticing that the boy who had the bag with the vodka had left his phone out. She swipes up and dials the emergency number, her hands trembling against the glass surface of the phone.

“Nine-one-one, please state your emergency,” the operator answers on the other side.

Her breath comes in trembling gasps. “Hi, I need… some people at this house overdosed, I need an ambulance. They don’t have a pulse and I’m pretty sure they’re dead.”

The operator clicks a couple things on a keyboard. “What’s your name and location?”

Hange tells her name and location, hanging up with an assurance that people will be there to help in ten minutes. She pockets the phone in her back pocket for now, shakily walking out of the room to look for Levi. She can hear a toilet flush faintly from the bathroom down the hall and makes her way down there.

Levi’s fringe which usually hangs nicely is plastered to his face, sweat running down the side of it. His eyes are tired, his face still pale, and some substance glosses his lips. He sees her at the doorframe and ducks his head back into the toilet. She’s still carrying the bottle of water from earlier with her, so she sets it gently on the side of the tub next to him and hops onto the sink counter, leaning against the medicine cabinet.

“You care about them?” She asks.

He takes a moment to respond. “Not really, no. I just knew them.”

They clean the bathroom slightly and go out to wait on the front porch, sitting on the steps there instead of the swing. It’s really quite a nice porch, with a swing and bannisters wide enough to sit on. Hange links arms with him at some point in the waiting and he doesn’t protest.

 The police car and ambulances arrive and there’s a flurry of activity from the house and back. A kind faced officer sits with them on the swing while shapes that Levi refuses to identify at first.

“You two together?” He asks them, gesturing towards their linked arms. Hange laughs at him and unlinks their arms, swatting her hand.

“No, just scared,” she replies. “Morning, Smith.”

Smith sits down on the bannister across from the swing, a pad of paper in one hand and pen in the other. “Morning, Zoe. Mind explaining what happened?”

Hange recounts everything, even the parts that Levi didn’t know. She explains how she kicked it with a boy named Marco who was part of the now deceased, being promised that she could leave at any time if she felt uncomfortable, yet she realized that was not a possibility as long as they were using.

“So you went off with… what’s your name, boy? I’ve not seen you around,” Smith held his hand out to Levi. “I’m Deputy Erwin Smith, but most people call me Erwin. And Zoe here knows me, so…”

Levi shook his hand roughly. “Levi Ackerman.”

Erwin raised his rather bushy blonde eyebrow. “Of Kuchel and Kenny?”

He sighed. “Yeah, those two. Sorry if they’ve ever been any trouble.”

“No!” Erwin laughed. “I went to school with them. They’re nice people, I just saw them last week at the Yeager block party. What makes you think they’d cause me trouble?”

“Er… it’s nothing,” Levi dismissed his blunder.

“Alright, Levi. Did everything that Zoe said happen or is she just dreaming again?” Erwin asked him.

“She’s quite awake,” Levi stated plainly. This earned another laugh from Erwin. “But yes, everything.”

“C’mere Levi,” Erwin motioned for Levi to come so he could whisper something in his ear. He obliged, feeling Erwin’s hot breath stained with the sour smell of coffee wash over his ear. “You and Zoe get into any funny business down at the lake?”

Levi jerked away from the older man. “No, and if there was any of that, it wouldn’t be any problem for you to mention it in front of her.”

Hange rolled her eyes from the swing. “Jeez, Smith. I’m eighteen now, you know. I’m a legal adult who can have sex and go into the military now.”

“Sorry Zoes,” Erwin said sheepishly. “You’re still thirteen in my head.”


	6. honey and white

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a Chem test today but wrote fanfiction instead //shrug//

“Sorry Zoes,” Erwin said sheepishly. “You’re still thirteen in my head.”

* * *

 

“I can tell,” Hange crosses her arms before pulling something out of her back pocket. “Is there anything else you want? Cause if that’s it, what’s the time? Also, I have Marco’s cell phone.”

“I need that phone, and it’s about seven thirty. Did you sneak out again?” He asks, taking the phone and calling over someone to put it in a bag.

She springs up from the porch swing. “You know it,” she declares. “Gotta get to Petra’s now before someone goes ham. Can I ask a favor?”

“Yeah, I won’t tell your parents,” Erwin smiles at her. “Do you need a ride?”

“I got it,” Levi cut in. “Mine won’t mind.”

The drive to Petra’s was uneventful, for Hange had the DS out again playing the familiar music. She sat curled up against the car door, occasionally glancing outside the window while Levi switched the radio. He couldn’t help but notice the things about her that he hadn’t been able to in the dark last night. She had beautiful hair, some kind of color he could only compare to cinnamon with faint streaks of gold through it. Her glasses were smudged beyond comprehension, yet her tawny eyes read the dialogue from her game rapidly.

“The light’s green,” she states, her eyes never leaving the screen. “And Petra’s the one with Christmas stuff already up, don’t ask me why.”

He looks ahead, realizing the light is indeed green now. He can’t believe it, but she’s actually kind of pretty.

They stop at Petra’s house which indeed does already have those moving white deer lit up with fairy lights in her lawn. A honey haired girl is already sitting there with her back against the garage door, still in her pajamas with her phone in her hand. At the sight of the car, she jumps up and runs over to Hange, who tiredly opens the door.

“Hange ohmygod are you okay? I’ve been trying to call you since I saw the news, who is this guy, is this the guy you were hanging out with last night? Gosh, he looks grumpy, what the hell is with him?” Petra’s rapid fire questions already had Levi wishing he could leave, but he had the feeling that he wouldn’t leave anytime soon.

Hange on the other hand did not seem tired out by Petra at all. Instead, she began explaining what had happened in the past twelve hours all up to this point in time at the same speed of Petra. The two girls make their way into the house, only breaking conversation for Petra to invite Levi in. Figuring there’s no harm in trying, he follows them at a slower pace after shutting off the engine.

Petra’s neighborhood is much nicer than his, with close-clipped lawns and towering two-story homes. There are birds chirping, the sun is bright, and the sky impeccably blue… such a contrast to the early morning sounds of his mother shouting at him to get up, metal trash cans being dragged back up to the house from the curb, and that tangible smell of unwashed bodies at his house.

The inside of the house was about what he expected too. No greasy stovetops, a polished wood table where the surface was actually visible, and wood the same color as her house all throughout it. The biggest contrast was a man sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper on an iPad. He glanced up at the girls, then closed the iPad when he saw Levi.

“Hey Hange! Get into any trouble last night?” He’s casual and calm and Levi can’t help but think that Hange probably spends way too much time here for a normal friend.

Hange just laughs. “Loads. Mr. Ral, this is Levi, a guy who I met last night. I think you’ll like him. Levi, can you explain what happened?”

Levi awkwardly shakes Mr. Ral’s hand, suddenly aware of the tears in the jeans he didn’t have money to replace and the smell of breath mints mixed with vomit on his breath. “Hullo, Mr. Ral. Err, can I use the bathroom before we talk?”

“Sure, go down the hall on the right and it’s the first door on your left,” Petra’s father made an imaginary map with his finger, tracing the route.

He follows that route, gliding his finger across the wall as a guide until he comes to the bathroom. The contrasts between his home and this home were still blatant here. The snow white tile was cool and the air was faintly humid, as if someone had taken a shower earlier. On the wall above the sink was a mirror, where Levi realized his how he looked.

Honestly, he looked like hell. His hair was plastered to his face with dried sweat, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he seemed to have an air of general unkemptness that made him almost angry. He dug around under the sink cabinet until he found a washcloth, wetting it under the sink and roughly wiping down almost every part of his body. After washing his mouth out in the sink multiple times, he deemed himself presentable and shook his head. He hated bad first impressions.

“Sorry, it’s been a long night,” he told Mr. Ral as he sat down next to the man. “I’m Levi Ackerman, I assume you’re Mr. Ral?”

“Nice to meet you, Levi. What happened last night? I’m just scanning the headlines and I see the Bodt house pop up, I was wondering…”

He almost facepalmed right there. “Yeah, we were involved there. Sorry, I didn’t want to bring Hange home after she’d been drinking, but I didn’t want her to just be out there, so I let her sleep in my car. I swear nothing happened.”

Mr. Ral laughed, his honey eyes sparkling. “It’s fine, she does this about once a month. But in all seriousness, what happened at the Bodt house?”

Levi explained everything, from when they had first met up to now. Halfway through the story a darker haired woman who he assumed to be Petra’s mother brought him a glass of water and towards the end Hange joined him finally, filling in the gaps of the story that Levi didn’t know.

“So… yeah, it’s been a long night,” he summed up. Hange sighed, resting her face against the wood table. He glanced at her face, the bags under her eyes a mirror of his own.

Mr. Ral sat for a moment, absorbing everything. “I think,” he began. “I think you should call your parents, Levi. Tell them what’s up.”

Hange watched Levi stiffen at the suggestion. “I don’t think I need to,” he mumbles.

“Ah,” Hange interrupted before he could speak. “He doesn’t really have great parents, so he kind of doesn’t bother.”

The older man looked curiously at Levi. “Kuchel and Kenny are wonderful, what are you talking about?”

Levi just shook his head. “No. It’s fine. I’m going home after this anyways.”

Petra came trudging down the stairs now, breaking the awkward silence between the trio. She walked up to Levi, slammed her hands on the table in front of him, and demanded, “Is she lying to me? Did you screw Hange?”

He blinked. “No.”

The honey haired girl spun to Hange. “How, just tell me how, is it you get the good-looking guys but you never bang them?”

Mr. Ral scratched his head. “Ah, perhaps this is a better conversation without me…”


	7. not jeans and hange-yo-zo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friends hate me because I made these little nicknames for them and had to shout about how cute they were for about fifteen minutes to them and they have absolutely no idea anything about the SNK universe.

He felt his phone vibrate first in second period. For whatever reason, a text at roughly this time of the day had become rather routine, one asking if he was going to eat in the lunch hall as always or finally join the groups in the courtyard. For whatever reason, he always declined to eat out in the courtyard, instead savoring the smell of antiseptic and bad food.

For whatever reason, Zoe Hange always ended up joining him in the lunch hall, the fluorescent lights making everyone look a little sicker than they felt.

“You should get some sunshine,” she tells him one day. He grunts, spooning macaroni that tastes like plastic into his mouth and swallowing without chewing. She continues, “No, seriously. Maybe you’d look a little less grumpy if you got some sun.”

“Like the sun’s very strong now,” he retorts. It’s true: they’ve gone past the Thanksgiving bustle and into the weeks before Christmas, everyone itching for the first snowfall that would cancel school. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen the sun in its full glory in weeks.

Hange’s hand snakes quick and silent like a snake, stealing a limp green bean from his tray. He grabs her wrist where it’s poised above her head, waiting to drop it into the maw that is her mouth, earning a smirk and a flick of the wrist as the bean hit his nose. She laughs, one of those sounds he’s gotten used to finally.

“Gross,” he states, peeling the green bean from his face and dangling it between his fingers. “With your current mood, I think this is how your shit came out this morning.”

“How elegant a description…” she peers at him from under those silver rimmed glasses. Ever since that drive to Petra’s, he hasn’t been able to properly look at those tawny eyes without noticing a new fleck of gold or get lost in the perpetual level of interest she always contained.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” she remarks, leaning forward. “Your eyes are all dark again. Are your parents being annoying again?”

He rolls his eyes. “They’re always annoying to some level. You’re right, maybe I should get some sun.”

She frowns, fiddling with the end of the black leather jacket on her lap. “Sleep during study hall.”

“Can’t, I’ve got AP Chemistry stuff to study for tomorrow,” he reasons. “I’d love to, though.”

She’s still looking frowny, so he sighs. “I’ll go to bed earlier tonight, okay?”

Another buzz of his phone tears him out of the memory. Petra’s dominating the conversation in English as usual, so he doesn’t really need to worry about missing any information. The text makes him raise his eyebrow, a little different from the usual routine.

HANGE-YO-ZO: hey so I think I left my coat in the science lab can u grab it for me

NOT JEANS: maybe, maybe not

HANGE-YO-ZO: it’s cold outside u will have to resort to actual physical contact OOOOooOooO

NOT JEANS: ugh (thumbsup) I’ll get your shitty ass jacket

HANGE-YO-ZO: seen at 11:32am.

So, he’d end up deviating from the usual schedule today. That was something unusual, a little bit of a bother, and the science labs were not his favorite due to their cold temperature. However, he was in kind of a pickle.

Ever since that drive to Petra’s, he couldn’t get Hange Zoe out of his head. Even in the dead of night when his mother was ranting or raving, even in the early hours of the morning when he was working on some project, she was always there. He found himself in such a pickle that he was willing to do almost anything to make her happy, an emotion that was ridiculously difficult to obtain in their lives.

They were dismissed for the hour long lunch break in half an hour, the class dragging on for what seemed like forever. He quickly slipped out of the classroom, grabbing his bag and running his hand over the back of his head. There had been a single clump of his hair that wasn’t part of the undercut that had curled like a comic character’s quirky hairpiece, and no matter how much water he used it wouldn’t calm down. His impeccability was marred.

The science labs were their usual sub-arctic temperature, making him glad he was on a quest for a coat. The small building was characteristically quiet for this time of day, all lights off except for the colored lights over growing plants. They shared a lab together yesterday, one he’d stepped into so he could tutor students for volunteer hours, so he easily located the coat and slung it over his body.


	8. subartic and seams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ^____^

_They shared a lab together yesterday, one he’d stepped into so he could tutor students for volunteer hours, so he easily located the coat and slung it over his body._

* * *

 

He vaguely registered that the coat had an almost zesty smell before a body much taller than his gripped him from behind. He slammed his arm against it instinctively before realizing that this body smelled quite similar to the coat.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized profusely, turning to see Hange’s hardly offended face. They’re kind of dangerously close now, the kind of close that makes her scent feel intoxicating.

“I think it looks better on you,” she laughs. “You look cute in it. Your hair looks cute too, y’know?”

Levi felt the color rise to his cheeks. “You’re cuter than shit,” he mumbles.

“What was that?” She asks, smirking. _Does she know what she does?_ He wonders.

“I said, you’re cuter than shit,” his voice is kind of unsteady and this is kind of dangerous and he’s not really sure what to do anymore. There’s a voice at the back of his head that is in total shambles, just repeating the same swear word over and over.

“I’ve been placed rather high, then…” she’s staring at him.

He can’t tell if the tall girl is getting shorter or he’s getting taller but their faces are _really_ close and now their lips are pressed together and this is so awkward but it’s kinda nice and he doesn’t know what to think but as they explore their others mouths he concludes he most _definitely_ likes this.

“You planned this,” he accuses between kisses, grabbing at the silver frames on her face. “Shitty-glasses.”

“Of course,” she murmurs.

He’s not really sure how long they spend kissing (or does he call it _making out?_ ) but he’s fairly sure that they’ve _gone_ past a level of friendship that they were normally at. His stomach’s growling now too because this is supposed to be lunch period for goodness sake, and he’s pretty sure he hears Hange’s watch going nuts for some reason.

They break apart, and Hange awkwardly checks her watch. Her face lights up. “Hey, that evolved my Squirtle finally!”

Levi stares at her. “What?”

“It’s evolved into a Wartortle,” she blushes. “I’ve got one of those smart watch things, it paid attention to my heartbeat and thought I was running.”

“You’re motivating yourself to be active by leveling up your Pokemon?” He asks her incredulously. “I’m not sure if that’s pure genius or just some new level of nerdy.”

“How about both?” She asks, putting the watch back into sleep mode and holding out her hand.  “Let’s get some lunch. How much do you know about Pokemon?”

The shorter man grabs her hand, somewhat awkwardly. “Not that much, just a little stuff from the television show. I know what a Squirtle and a Charmander are, but that’s about it.”

Lunch is its usual period, although a little shorter than usual. He keeps her jacket on throughout the day, prompting Petra to shout at him from halfway across the hall that she “fucking called it” and earning a high five from her. Hange keeps his phone well stocked throughout the day with information about Pokemon, even making him download the same app that she has to see which one of them can level up a Torchic the fastest. He thinks she’ll win.

When he gets home, he realizes that he still has her jacket.

NOT JEANS: hey do you want your jacket back today?

HANGE-YO-ZO: ehh. It looks so good on you. keep it for now.

HANGE-YO-ZO: oh and also I’m sorry if I made us horribly awk after that lunch period.

NOT JEANS: what does that lunch period make us?

HANGE-YO-ZO: uhhhhhhhh

HANGE-YO-ZO: I’m sorry ok

NOT JEANS: if you keep apologizing I’ll smash your shitty glasses J

HANGE-YO-ZO: J

NOT JEANS: and idk it’ll make us whatever we want, I don’t know what I’m doing, but keep it on the down low I don’t like much attention

HANGE-YO-ZO: yeah no prob I’m adding a toilet emoji to your name

NOT JEANS: nO.

Levi sighs and leans against the bathroom counter. He really doesn’t know what their kiss makes them, but he decides it makes him incredibly happy. His fingers move quickly across the screen to his phone to tell Hange that he’s going to shower. Noticing his battery is low, he dashes to his bedroom for his charger.

He never really does get his charger. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, seams in the jacket ripping is his mother, her dark hair tied up in a bun like a spider and a terribly pale pallor to her face. Her eyes are something wild, maybe half sober and shining. Seeing him enter the room, she glances at him and grins.

“You’ve got a girlfriend,” her words are like knives stabbing into him as she crosses her arms, the popping of the seams in the jacket audible in the nearly silent room.

“Not quite,” he advances towards the bed. “Can I have that jacket back?”

“No,” she grabs her elbows, making even more seams pop. He winces. “It smells like grapefruit. Men don’t wear grapefruit. Why haven’t I met her?”

He feels his eyebrows crumple together. “Because she’s not my girlfriend, she’s just a friend and I didn’t mean to take her jacket home. I need to return it tomorrow, mom.”

Her eyebrows raise too, unkempt like black caterpillars against her face. “No, this jacket is mine now. I quite-“ she flexes her arms and now he’s not even sure if there are any of the delicate seams left in the coat. “-like this coat, after all. Very nice leather. She’s rich.”

Levi sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. He leans over the bed to grab his charger, only to feel his arm in a grip the strength of a vice. Surprisingly, his mother is still very strong despite doing almost nothing with her life anymore.

“She’s rich. Can you get me more?” Her voice is but a breath, but it’s enough to make him yank his arm away. He jams his elbow into her body, too close to his, tainting Hange’s jacket with her scent. The idea alone disgusts him, and such an aversion is just enough for him tonight.

“Get the fuck out,” he hears himself snarl. “Now.”

His mother just laughs, untying her hair from its bun in one swift motion and flopping backwards onto his bed, letting her hair form a web across his pillow. From the way it clumps together and looks almost wet, it’s filthy. She’s filthy. This room is filthy, this house is filthy, everything is filthy.

He’s not quite sure how it happens, but before he knows it has his wallet, his phone, his backpack and a clean pair of boxers and he’s texting her at the glaring red stoplight for her house address. He’s vaguely on the way to Petra’s neighborhood and meets Hange at the gate.

She climbs in the passenger side of the car, wordlessly gesturing the directions to her house. They stop at a house almost identical to Petra’s, except there’s a shiny black BMW sitting in the front of the house instead of inside the garage. Hange leads him inside, telling him to wait at the entrance hallway while she gets her parents.

It’s not really that late but the sun sets so early this time of year, so he sits in the darkness of the hallway for some time before Hange’s face appears again. “C’mon, you can stay here, but you’ve gotta talk to my parents.”


	9. parents and the inevitable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new laptop is 10x easier to write on. w00t. good feelings in this chapter. :)

_It’s not really that late but the sun sets so early this time of year, so he sits in the darkness of the hallway for some time before Hange’s face appears again. “C’mon, you can stay here, but you’ve gotta talk to my parents.”_

* * *

 

Levi follows her to the kitchen, the same layout of Petra’s but flipped. This house is painted in darker tones but still has the same warm feel to it, and the people who he assumes to be Hange’s parents are sitting on a dark brown armchair, her mother perched on the arm. Her mother looks suspiciously like Hange but she doesn’t wear her hair up or any silver framed glasses, and her face is much rounder than her daughters. Her father is a blonde-haired guy and Levi can definitely see where Hange’s sharp face came from.

“Oh, you’re the Ackerman boy?” His father greets him with.

Hange sighs. “Mom, Dad, this is Levi.”

Levi shrugs. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Hange.”

“Zoe, are you dating this boy? He’s quite handsome,” her mother remarks. Hange blushes, shaking her head.

“No, but he’s staying here tonight, you guys wanted to talk to him or whatever, so I’ll just go get a bed figured out upstairs,” she looks mildly embarrassed.

“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbles. Hange’s father beckons for him to sit, his facial expression impossible to read. Hange just sighs and goes upstairs, taking the stairs two at a time by the sound of it.

Her father watches him closely for a moment before sighing. “Don’t bang my daughter.”

Levi smacks his palm against his forehead, agitated. “Why does everyone she knows think I’m trying to bang her?”

“What else would happen when a teenage boy goes over to stay at a teenage girl’s house?” Hange’s mother asks, laughing. “What he’s trying to say is, don’t try anything funny.”

Her father looks grateful for her interjection. “Hange means the world to us, and I mean really, just don’t do anything stupid. I’ve got one question though.”

“Shoot,” Levi replies.

“Why are you here? I mean, Hange just told us you were the boy who helped her out a couple weeks ago when Petra’s car broke down, but…” Her mother leaned close, nodding.

Oh, so _that_ was her excuse. To be fair, he did have quite a bit of mechanic expertise, but not enough to fix a broken down car. It didn’t exactly explain everything, but it was a decent enough excuse.

“Do you want the version you’d like to hear, or the version that would wreck my parents for you?” He asks, sinking against the couch warily.

“The truth, if it exists,” her father said quietly. “I get the feeling that we won’t get the whole truth, though.”

Levi closed his eyes and shook his head. “They’re both into hard drugs, except they have this stupid obsession with looking like they aren’t. Naturally, they don’t give a shit about me… pardon my French... and don’t really give a shit about our house or anything else but getting more heroin. It’s quite frustrating.”

Hange’s father sat and watched Levi for a moment, Levi not trusting himself to open his eyes for fear of the moisture in them showing. Finally, he heard his father speak up.

“You are welcome here at any time of day or night. All I ask if you keep the house clean and stay in school,” he tells Levi. Levi’s eyes jerk open. He can hardly believe, with the way Hange made her parents out to be, that these people are welcoming him into their home.

“Thank you,” he replies softly. “Can I go get my stuff? From the car, I mean?”

Her father laughs. “You can do whatever, Levi.”

“Are you guys done yet?” Hange’s head is poking out from the top of the stairwell, her ponytail falling over the side of her face. “You can’t keep him forever, you know.”

Levi stands up, the rest of her family following suit. “Yeah, just let me get my bag from the car, I’ll be up in a second.”

He almost hears her fucking _giggle_. “No! I want to show you around,” she squeals.

“Fine…” he over exaggerates the vowel. She skips out to his car, tugging excitedly on the handle of his door. He deftly hits the lock, his heavy backpack swung over her broad shoulders in seconds.

“What’s so interesting about your house anyways?” He asks as they navigate the dark entry hall again. “It’s just like Petra’s.”

She turns halfway up the stairs, her face serious. “Notice the pictures. Notice the way they’ll take my phone after midnight. Notice all the stupid shit they put up because they’re proud of me.”

He does notice, actually. He noticed it the first time he took a decent glance around their living room. There are photos of Hange everywhere, at all ages and developments of life. There’s even a hazy ultrasound photo thrown on the wall, framed and dated at the bottom in white paint pen. “Wish mine did this,” he mumbles.

“You kidding? They’re crazy,” she grabs his hand and guides him through the dark upstairs hallway, pointing out doors as they go. The second to last door is the one she brings him in, flicking on the light on the inside wall and running in the center to throw her arms up. “Welcome home, Shorty.”

 


	10. discussions and space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing this characters without using small-town Florida vernacular is really difficult. 
> 
> and yes, I went there.

_“You kidding? They’re crazy,” she grabs his hand and guides him through the dark upstairs hallway, pointing out doors as they go. The second to last door is the one she brings him in, flicking on the light on the inside wall and running in the center to throw her arms up. “Welcome home, Shorty.”_

* * *

 

He ignores her nickname, instead giving a low whistle. Her bedroom is exactly what he’d expect an eccentric science geek to have. On the north wall was a window with several types of plants sitting on it, a Polaroid camera and prints with those plants in different stages of growth next to them, all of it surrounded by a mixture between band posters and science posters. On the east wall her closet spilled an equal mixture of clothes, scientific equipment, and what he could only describe as general mayhem. To his left was a desk with some sort of geology project on it, crystals growing in a cylinder and colorful ones sitting next to a small microscope. Next to that, her wall was painted with that chalkboard paint that let her draw extensive diagrams that he vaguely recognized as the photosynthesis project. Underneath the diagram posters which clung to the walls like flies to sticky paper he could see they were a kind of royal blue, and when he looked up, plastic glow in the dark stars had been stuck to the ceiling with the telltale blue of sticky tack.

“This is awesome,” he whispers in awe. “Your parents are crazy? They let you do this.”

She shakes her head. “I’m starting to think we have different definitions of crazy. Sit, I’ll hang your clothes up.”

He complies with her request, sitting on the galaxy-printed bed pushed up against the chalk wall and the window wall. It’s upon seeing her flit around her room like a bee to bright flowers that he realizes just how beautiful this girl is. It’s like seeing her for the first time all over again. That stolen glance in the car was nothing compared to this.

She’s in front of his face suddenly, those tawny eyes framed by dark lashes. “You’re doing that thing where you stare again.”

“It’s cause you’re so damn beautiful,” he admits. “I can’t help but stare. Beauty deserves to be admired, or some bullshit like that.”

“Hmm… what were we discussing before your rather abrupt departure from your house?” She asks, flopping down on the bed next to him. Gently, he sinks down against the comforter next to her, both of them staring at the plastic stars on the ceiling.

“We were discussing…” he pauses a moment, his lips tingling as he feels his face flush. “Would you rather I show you?”

That’s the other thing about Hange. She’s a _really_ good kisser, while Levi awkwardly fumbled to figure out a rhythm that wouldn’t make her feel like her tongue was caught in a washer’s spin cycle. He can’t quite figure it out, so he decides to ask.

She laughs, suddenly blushing and looking down. “Petra.”

“Petra?” he asks, confused.

“When Petra and I were like, fifteen, we both kind of practiced on each other. And some other things we could try one day, if you were up for it,” she mumbles. “But it hasn’t happened since then, and she’s dating Mike now, and I’m just kinda not into any girls right now, so don’t think…”

Levi laughs. “Hange, what was one of the first things I asked you when I met you?”

She bites her lower lip. “Ah, right. You’re not bothered by it though, you’re sure?”

He holds the bottom of her chin in the tip of his fingers, bringing her face to meet his. “I’m bothered by the fact that you have more practice than me.”

They continue like this for quite some time, eventually stopping when Hange announces she officially can’t hold her pee any longer, sparking a discussion on the scientific disadvantages and merits to holding one’s pee. It ends rather suddenly when Hange’s mother knocks on the door to tell them that they should take their showers, in which she glares particularly at Hange.

“Let me show you-“ Hange starts when her mother leaves, but Levi’s already got his clothes and toothbrush. “You already know, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he tells her plainly. “You showed me around like a fucking harpy.”

“I’d prefer to be like, Navi, or something,” she retorts. “Go shower, Shorty.”

And shower he does, savoring the scent of that citrus body wash and hair product she uses. He still prefers his own lavender, but this is a pretty close second to his favorite. Their water pressure is much nicer than his at home too, and he lets himself sit under the steaming stream of water for a moment to let his mind wander away from reality.

He’s not sure what to consider him and Hange as at this point, but her small mention of her activities with Petra had put a certain image in his mind that was hard to get out. Unfortunately, that image wasn’t the only thing that was hard in that situation. He groaned, internally screaming at himself and cursing his teenage hormones.

Fifteen minutes later, Hange’s banging on the door to save her some hot water and he’s drying off his hair. “It’s not locked,” he calls over to her, making sure his boxers are definitely on his body. For good measure, he wraps the towel on his head around his waist like he’s seen in the movies.

“I found something at the bottom of your bag while I was hanging your clothes,” she greets him with, promptly entering the shower and shutting the frosted glass door behind her, flinging clothes over the top as she speaks. “It was a quite familiar bottle of some absolutely beautiful liquid. Really entrancing. We should consume it.”

He sighs, the shape of her body still quite clear behind the frosted glass. “What’s your goal tonight, Shitty-Glasses? I’ve been told specifically not to fuck you, and yet…we were going to discuss one of the aspects of our friendship before the kissing started.”

“Ah yes,” her voice is kind of muffled by the water running now. “Are we dating? Are we hooking up? Are we friends?”

Levi rummages around in one of the drawers on the vanity, extracting a pair of fingernail scissors. “I’d quite like to say the first one, but the second one sounds more likely, and the third one is a definite yes.”

“Levi Ackerman, are you gonna be my guy?” She asks quite suddenly, her voice shaky. “Because I don’t want to just hook up and drink with you. I quite like you.”

“Did you just use Jet lyrics on me?” He asks, confused. “Yes, let’s date, I’ll be your boy, but seriously? Jet?”

“I have a Jet poster next to my Green Day poster,” She calls out. “They’re quite good and you should not shame their songs.”

“I’m not really shaming them, I’m just surprised,” he defends. His fingernails are quite long, and it’s been awhile before he’s taken anything but the tip of his knife to them. He decides to go rather short, the quick snips of the scissors audible in the room.

“Hey Levi?” Hange calls out, the water stopping. “How about that second one?”

Levi pauses for a moment, a foggy memory resurfacing in his brain. “Wait, won’t you? Just wait for a little bit.”

“Ah, okay.”


	11. television and coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh yeah, I'm /that/ person, who takes ages to update then only has a crappy short chapter to go with it.  
> love ya.

Across town, Hange sees the light coming through bleary lids, her green plants illuminated by the sunlight. Her bed’s empty, the backpack in the corner is gone, and the hangers in her closet are bare. She should have expected that; it was Levi, after all. Still, the emptiness puts a certain hollow feeling in a corner of her heart. A knock at her bedroom door interrupts her thoughts, making her groan and instinctively wrap the edge of her duvet around her body. “Go away Mom, it’s Saturday, it’s winter break.”

Her door opens anyways like it always does, but the person who enters doesn’t unwrap Hange like her mother usually does and definitely doesn’t shout at her to wake up. Instead they move around the room, rustling the hangers and dropping something on the ground. When she feels their presence over her body, she peeks from underneath the duvet and instantly relaxes.

“Levi, you came back,” she exclaims in a small voice.

Levi just snorts. “Do you want eggs or toast?”

Hange blinked, slowly sitting up. “Both?”                                                                        

He just sighs and silently leaves the room, his feet softly padding down the stairs. She hears a frying pan hit the range with a barely audible clink and the sizzle of butter being put in the pan.

So maybe Levi wouldn’t get that television style of waking up, but he sure as hell would make sure Hange got some kind of variation of it. He took the sunny-side up eggs and slid them onto plates, setting the table as he went. The toast sat on plates with gold patterns around the edges, immaculate white and smooth.

“You are wicked,” he’s greeted with. “Absolutely wicked. Really, marry me now.”

“Don’t let your parents hear that,” he says under his breath, smirking. She’s really the kind of television style beautiful when she wakes up, though. Her usual ponytail style has been replaced with shiny hair that falls just past her shoulders where the edge of her oversized shirt sporting some anime is just slipping off.

The toaster clicks as the pieces of bread pop up from the machine, plucked eagerly by a slender hand. Hange munches dry toast in her mouth as she opens the fridge and extracts butter, jam, and ketchup.

Levi looks at the ketchup warily. “Please tell me you aren’t one of those people who likes ketchup on their eggs.”

She blinks, looking at him with a straight face as her hand reaches into the cupboard to grab a printed mug. “I must not tell lies.”

Levi makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Your fridge is getting empty, are you going shopping soon or something?  Also, do you have coffee?”

“Dad makes the coffee, I haven’t the foggiest how to. I just set his mug out for him,” Hange replies. She reaches higher into the cabinet from a shelf he cannot see and extracts a bag of coffee. “I mean, if you can figure it out… he likes it real strong. I can’t remember how many scoops.”

“Probably six,” he flips the last egg off the skillet onto the plate, making sure to leave extras for Hange’s parents. He dexterously flips the coffee maker open and fills it to the designated sections, setting it aside to quietly percolate by the microwave. Then, he washes his hands under the tap and dries then, something he’s done after he switches between every food. “Go get washed up, your breath smells like a dying cat.”

Hange snorts, complying with his request and muttering something about cleanliness and cats on her way to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Levi wipes down the countertops.

“How long have you been up?” She asks when she returns, her hair back up in its usual ponytail. “I woke up and you weren’t here, where did you go?”

He shrugs. “Went to my place and got some clothes. I don’t know where my parents were, but our house was vacant.”

“That’s odd,” she frowns and her eyebrows furrow together at the front, unkempt compared to most eyebrows he saw on girls his age. “No sign of life whatsoever?”

“None.” She’s right, it is odd. Usually someone would be at least passed out in his house, either his parents or one of their guests, but the house was almost never that quiet. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he ignores them as the coffee maker makes a tiny ding noise.

The brunette jumps up from her position against the counter, racing to fill her cup before Levi can. She dumps about four spoons of sugar in the cup before filling it with coffee, ducking into the fridge to grab caramel flavored creamer and pouring some of that in too. He watches this process with a mixture of horror and disgust, feeling alienated when she lets him pour out his black coffee with a single half spoonful of sugar in it.

“You’re going to get diabetes,” he declares, watching her stir the concoction and sip it, the steam rising from it collecting on her silver-framed glasses. Her cup changes from a pitch black color as her cup heats up, the constellations of the sky traced in white.

“Wrong,” she smacks her lips together in satisfaction. “It’s been proven that you can’t get diabetes from an overconsumption of sugar. It’s primarily inherited. However, weight gain because of an overconsumption of sugar and a generally poor diet can trigger that gene. It still doesn’t cause it, though.”

Levi just stares at her, vaguely noticing her father come into the room to pour himself a cup and mutter something about her being right. “Sir, how do you deal with your daughter?”

Her father looks something like a vampire drinking his favorite blood type as he takes long draughts from his Star Wars cup.  “Just agree ‘cause she’s usually right. Also, she’ll Google check ‘ya, so…”

He just sighs agitatedly, Hange’s mother following her dad shortly at the table. They all eat breakfast mostly in silence, except to comment on Levi’s cooking or to read an article out from the newspaper on the iPad.

Hange licks the bottom of her coffee cup, dipping her finger into it to extract undissolved sugar crystals. “Solubility is the ability for something to dissolve in a solution, generally in water.”

Levi wonders how much sugar they go through.


	12. holidays and homes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you ever just... run out of steam for a fic, then feel guilty because you haven't finished it, then eventually move onto other stuff and forget about the fic entirely? 'cause that's what happened here.  
> there's one girl who mentioned this to me the other day, and I entirely forgot that this existed until she said she hadn't checked my page in awhile. /whoops/. so dear A, this one's to you.

Over the course of the Christmas break, Levi returns home twice. Each time he does, there’s nobody home, though there is clear evidence of people living there by the way the needles are piling up and the in-date milk in the fridge. Still, he grabs more clothes from his closet and adds them to his already stuffed backpack, his room nearly empty now that he’s made a couple trips. It’s not like he had a ton of things in his room anyways. He’s always been a quietly minimalistic guy, content with a couple good shirts and jeans and the essentials, and not much else.

He celebrates Christmas with the Hange family, even getting gifts from them much to his displeasure. Her mother buys him a cheap (“but very useful, my husband’s had his for ten years!”) electric shaving razor, and her father buys him a new waterproof phone case to replace the battered one he’s been running with for a couple years. Hange gives him a bottle of his favorite cologne and a wink when her parents aren’t looking, telling him there’s a little more there than what meets the eye.

Hange’s family is somehow surprised when they find he has a gift for them too: a letter, thanking them for everything they’ve done and more.  They’re tactful enough to hide the sum of money that he’s hidden in the envelope as payment for letting him stay there, and the short celebration ends—for now-- with a lot of hugging and smiling.

Her winking gift turns out to be a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s which he jokingly tells her that it’s a gift to her too, earning a knowing shrug back. The rest of Christmas morning is spent in Hange’s bedroom, lips on lips and hands in places they hadn’t explored before.

Christmas dinner was the first time that Levi was able to pinpoint feeling almost like he was part of the Hange family. For the first time in years, he was surrounded by warmth. It was the kind of warmth that you couldn’t get from a fire for from a shot of whiskey; no, this was the kind of warmth that you got from being happy, and loved, and having a full stomach and sleepy eyes and people who genuinely cared about your well-being asking if you wanted another glass of spice eggnog. He’d missed it so much; he hadn’t even realized it until that point. It was at that pivotal point in time that Levi realized something: he didn’t belong at his home anymore. No, he belonged here.

New Years was eventful, although it was the kind of eventful that he’d expected. Two things stood out to him on the night where a big gaudy ball dropped in New York. First, he made a resolution to become independent from his parents and family, and find a way to kick all the bad habits that came with living with negligent people. The second thing that stood out to him was Petra’s woops right before she took another shot of Malibu on her parent’s back porch as his and Hange’s lips, clumsy from the liquor, crashed together. He’d never had a New Year’s kiss before. He had now.

 

* * *

 

The next point that Levi Ackerman is fully aware of is that he is shopping in the good ‘ol Wally World, a list and pen in one hand and cart in the other. Beside him in khaki capris and a black button down is Hange, who skips eagerly to items on the shelves as he reads them off. Truthfully, he isn’t sure how he ended up in such a store anyways, doing domestic actions for a woman who isn’t really his mother. Shaking the pieces of black hair that fell over his vision away from his face, he called out for a bag of sugar, feeling the loose crystals on the floor crunch under his feet and under the wheels of the metal cart. Once again, he was reminded of the supermarket he was in, and internally groaned.

Hange’s enthusiasm for sugar was something admirable. What might have been more admirable was her enthusiasm for cute things, specifically, small children wearing tee-shirts.

“Ohmygooood,” he heard from the figure racing down the aisle. “You’ve got a Chespin on your shirt!”

Levi only vaguely knew what a Chespin was from Hange’s long lectures at night about Pokémon, and how complicated the world was, and how Charmander was definitely the best starting Pokémon. After being given the DS for a little while, he agreed wholeheartedly. Hange was surprised at how quickly he advanced in the game, but he had almost zero patience for it once he lost a match. She hadn’t introduced him to the cards yet, but she was sure it would be a wild ride when she did.

For now though, there was a Hange holding both a little boy’s hands in hers, her eyes wide and a grin on her face. The little boy’s mother was looking at her with humor as the two fans exchanged stories, firing ideas back and forth rapidly. When Levi reached the spectacle with his half full cart, he just exchanged glances with the mother of the little boy who laughed and sighed.

“That game turns adults into children,” the mother noted. “Your wife is so good at calming him down, though. He was about to have another tantrum.”

“She’snotmywife,” Levi blurted out. “Sorry, we’re just friends, we’re both still in high school.”

The mother looked at him with wise blue eyes. “You will want to marry her, boy. I’m sure of it. Don’t ever let her go.”

He stared at the white tops of his black sneakers, rocking back in the structure of the shoe, feeling more awkward than he knew possible. “Can you get me the big unrefined sugar? I can’t reach.”

She blinked, handing him the largest bag of the sweetener wordlessly.

Hange skips up to him only a beat later, her phone out displaying a cartoon animal on its screen. “I love this app, I’m so happy it’s come out. That kid had only Magikarps though, so I gave him an Eevee.”

“I only understood half of that,” Levi admits, holding up the bag of sugar. “I’ve got your fix here. What else do we need in this aisle?”

She takes the list that’s been hastily scrawled on a piece of napkin from the top rack of the shopping cart. “Just vegetables now.”

“When did you decide to go for vegetarianism?” He frowns, seeing the extensive list of fruits and vegetables, along with three types of tofu and meat substitutes. She pauses and thinks for a moment before explaining.

“Well, meats and dairy have been found to be significantly detrimental to the health of many individuals, so that was one time. Don’t give me that look, it’s not from my textbook this time. Besides, I’m lactose intolerant, so it’s just easier. More protein that way, too,” she explains in a very matter-fact way. He sighs, resigning himself to an already existing life without steaks… except, intentional this time.

They meander their way over to the vegetables section, where Hange flits around like a fairy gathering her favorite fruits and vegetables while Levi stands guard by the bakery section. He shoves his hand in the pocket of his jeans, feeling the cigarette at the bottom next to his lighter and phone. He hasn’t told Hange, but he’s really trying to kick the cigarette habit. He knows it’s awful for him and he hates himself every time he lights one, so he’s quietly been moving down from carrying the pack with him to just one with him and next week, he’ll just carry around the half that’s been rolling around in the pack for a while and then he’ll stop altogether.

She returns with the groceries. She’s got three types of bread and many bags of vegetables, ranging from common ones like carrots to ones he’s never had, like the onion that she calls a “leak” and the leafy bunch that she calls “bok choy.” He thinks she’s absolutely nuts.

“Listen, I feel like I’m part of this house,” Levi stated halfway through putting the groceries away. He wasn’t doing much to help but put the cold stuff in the fridge, to be honest. Everyone in Hange’s house seemed to fall into the extremely tall category, and their cupboards were made for it too. His shortness wasn’t much of a welcome thing.

“Really? That’s so good to hear,” replied Hange with a warm smile. She had no trouble putting the flour on the top shelf of the cupboard.

He paused, letting his eyes travel down. “I’m going to my house tonight. To get the rest of my stuff, I mean. And probably tell my parents that I’m out of there. I’ve got to get mail redirected too. I’ve got stuff to sort out still.”

Hange caught his mood almost instantly, her eyebrows pushing together as she pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat in it. “They are not going to like that,” she said firmly.

Levi bit his lip, letting his hair fall over his eyes. “Yeah, I know. I know they’re not gonna like it. But I can’t keep doing domestic shit with you and pretending I still live there. I gotta get out of there.”

She sighed before rising from the chair and embracing Levi in a tight hug. “Please be careful. I don’t want you going, but I know you have to.”

Her breath was surprisingly uneven, like she was trying to hold back some sort of cocktail of emotions that could come spilling through. They sat there for a moment embracing each other, listening to each other’s breathing until they heard a knock on the doorframe.

“Zoe, I need the leftover money,” called Mr. Hange from the doorway. Hange turned three shades pinker than her usual skin tone and hurriedly broke the embrace, digging through her pockets to find the cash in a rush. Levi sat awkwardly, not really affected by Mr. Hange’s presence, but more affected by the girl’s reaction.

She shoved a wad of cash in his hand, the tips of her ears red. “Here, sorry,” she mumbled.

“Jeez, you act like he just caught is banging on the kitchen counter,” Levi noted bluntly. This earned a deep laugh from Mr. Hange, sending the girl into a somehow deeper shade of red than before.

“See, he knows how to joke. I like him,” Mr. Hange stated, winking. “I’ll let you two finish putting these away, it looks like I interrupted an emotional moment.”

“Thanks,” Hange groaned, eager to bury her face in the fridge and shove the foreign vegetables into the drawer.

Mr. Hange turned to leave, then turned again. “Oh, and Levi,” he met the dark-haired boy’s eyes. “If you need anything, feel free to come talk to me.”

Levi swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. If only he knew what he was getting into later that night.


	13. knives and hotel bedrooms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started college today!!

 

He came to his parent’s house around the same time as what dinnertime used to be. The lights were on inside for once, which was a difference as compared to what he’d seen the last few times that he’d stopped by. Levi was tempted to walk up to the front door and ring the bell like some sort of stranger, but he knew there would be no negotiating with them at the front door. Instead, he took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart before walking in through the back door, calling out an “I’m home!” as he entered.

He figured maybe it would be best to just pretend like he hadn’t spent nearly a month outside of this home. They hadn’t called him, nor had they made any attempt to contact or look for him as far as he knew, so for all he knew… it might not even matter that he just showed up tonight.

Of course, he was wrong. It did matter.

“Levi,” came a sickly sweet voice from the dining room. “Come here, Levi. Welcome home.”

He grit his teeth, already irritated at being here. Still, he followed the voice, finding it belonged to the one woman he didn’t exactly want to be greeted by standing at the dining room table, a bottle of Windex in one and a paper towel in the other. “Hey, mom.”

His mother looked even more sick than usual. Kuchel Ackerman’s hair looked like she was taking inspiration from the Grudge, and when you got past the fact that she was essentially skin and bones, she made no attempt to hide the track marks lining her arms. Levi really wondered how she even managed to pull herself together long enough to present herself as normal to others.

“Let me see you, I haven’t seen you in a while,” she cooed, setting down the cleaning supplies and beckoning with her finger for him to come closer. Reluctantly, he did, until he was almost half a foot from her. Maybe, just maybe, she’d hug him.

“I’ve been busy, Mom,” he said clearly, making sure to enunciate every word. He’d made a promise to Hange before he left that he would stand his ground in front of his parents. He wouldn’t break it. Hopefully.

She stared at him a moment, gray against black, before reaching a hand up quick as lightning to slap his face. Levi recoiled from her touch, his cheek stinging and his hands forming tight fists.

 “Look Mom,” he took a deep breath. “I’m here to get my shit and leave. I’m going. I’ve got a place to stay, I’ve got an income, and it’s time I stop depending on you guys.”

“What dependence?” hissed Kuchel. “You haven’t been here for a month!”

“I have,” he untightened, then retightened his fists. “I’ve been getting my stuff slowly, when you guys aren’t here. You still haven’t even noticed. My room’s mostly bare.”

“Why are you leaving me?” She suddenly shrieked, launching herself toward him and striking her hand across his face once more. “You’re my only son! My only son is leaving me! You can’t leave me, you’re still seventeen! You’re still mine!”

This time, he was ready for the slap, letting it happen before forcefully shoving her by her shoulders back. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he also wasn’t going to let her hurt him that easily. “Mom, you didn’t even notice. You don’t even care,” he said. “I turned eighteen a week ago. I’m not yours anymore.”

“You’ve never been mine,” the grin on her face was wild, so much more out of control than what Levi had ever seen. “You’re a bastard child, you know?”

He felt like the floor had suddenly dissipated under his feet. “What?”

“You’re a bastard,” the grin was more wicked than wild now. “You’re not even your fathers. Do you know whose you are?”

This felt like a sick joke now, twisting his guts into something nauseating. “I’m your son,” he replied quietly.

Kuchel laughed. “Oh, you’re my son alright. I don’t even know your father; I don’t really give a shit either.”

Levi bit his lip, his emotions a blank plane with nothing to fill them. It felt like he had a white bubble in his head, blocking him from all complex thoughts. “Where’s Kenny, then?” He asked, feeling dumb.

He heard Kenny’s tongue click against the top of his mouth. “Been here the whole time, dumbass.”

Levi stared at the man he called his father for his entire life, noting the way he didn’t seem to share any features with him at all. The jaw was all wrong, and so was the eye color, and everything else from his demeanor from the slight set of his mouth when he was irritated. They were so different, and the feeling of stupidity increased tenfold.

“Get your shit and get out. Don’t touch her again,” was all Kenny said, crossing the room to embrace Kuchel from behind. Levi didn’t need to be told twice. He bolted to his bedroom, taking one of the big plastic trash bags from his pocket and uncrumpling it, shoving the rest of his clothing into it along with the rest of his essentials. Within twenty minutes, both his bathroom and his bedroom had been gutted, and looked more like a hotel room than a bedroom. It was strange how impersonal the place he’d grown up had come to be.

Levi stopped in the doorway, taking one last survey of his bedroom. This seemed final, somehow much more final than he’d expected. There were no particularly good memories here; he’d never brought home someone to his bed, nor had he ever done anything particularly significant here other than sleep, work on schoolwork, and shower. It made saying goodbye harder somehow, bringing back the lump in the bottom of his throat.

With a heavy sigh, he decided enough was enough. He shut his bedroom door one last time before taking his belongings, barely enough to fill half a trash bag. These hallways were familiar, but they were no longer his. He figured he’d say goodbye, at least. Or at least try something like that.

He found his parents in the kitchen, sitting next to each other with a piece of paper and two pens between them. They didn’t look up as he entered the room, until he approached the table and rapped his fist against the table. Not too hard or aggressively, but gently.

“You aren’t our son anymore,” Kuchel stated suddenly. She added another word to what was written on the paper before signing it with a flourish. Kenny signed it shortly afterward before standing up, towering over Levi the same way that Hange did… but without the comforting vibe that she gave. He folded up and gave Levi the letter, who tucked it in his back pocket before meeting his… parent?’s eyes.

“I called you my son for so long. You haven’t been here for a month, and you have the nerve to come here and tell your mother you’re leaving. No warning, no nothing. Do you realize how much you’re hurting her?” Kenny asked, stepping toward Levi. In the back of his head, Levi just heard Hange’s encouragement to not back down.

“I don’t mean to hurt her. Or you. Or anyone,” Levi said, trying to gather his thoughts. _Don’t back down._ “I’m just sick of living with people who don’t give a shit about me.”

This time, Levi saw the hand raise to strike him and had enough time to duck. Instinctively his hand reached up from his side, dropping the trash bag to make contact with what ended up being Kenny’s upper shoulder. For a moment, the two men met eyes and stared at each other, before a flurry of fists met flesh. Levi didn’t really pay attention to anything else but the fight until he felt a yank at the back of his shirt, sending Kenny’s fist just shy of the center of his right eyeball.

That was going to bruise like a bitch, Levi noted in the back of his head. He spun, shoving his mother away from his back and grabbing his bag from the floor. She hit the wall, sending the plates hanging there tottering. With that sound of china hitting drywall, Levi realized with a start that he needed to get out. _Now._ He wasn’t against hitting crappy people, but women and the woman he called his mother? This was just getting too close.

Quickly he ducked under the two other people in the room, grabbing his bag from the floor and hastily making his way to the front door. The door was locked. He fumbled a bit, hearing footsteps behind him before he yanked the heavy door open, leaving it that way as he made his way into his car. The bag of stuff landed in the passenger seat, and his engine revved to life while his hands ran almost on autopilot. Kenny’s scowling face was in his windshield, slamming fists on his hood, but reverse led to him stumbling forward and shouting words Levi refused to hear.

The car ride was silent. Hange waited for him on the front stoop, sitting with her phone. She looked up when he pulled up, her hair, down today, falling in waves over her face. For a moment, there was an emotion he couldn’t quite recognize on her face.

“Oh my god,” came Hange’s voice, sounding rather far away despite his ear being only about four yards away. “Levi, what happened?”

He grabbed the trash bag from the passenger seat, only about three things on his mind at this point. At the forefront was anger, anger so fierce that he couldn’t see too well and his ears were rushing and he felt far removed from reality. In the middle, a sudden wave of relief because Hange was here and he was home, and lastly, the only real coherent thought that he could form into a sentence: “I need a smoke and that bottle of Jack.”


	14. bruises and yellow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a really short filler chapter. the last chapter was really difficult to write, and the one after this hasn't been fun either.   
> also: college is fun

Hange’s parents didn’t ask much beyond what they needed to when they saw Levi’s injuries. They merely took his, “I left my parents’ house and they didn’t like it” for what it was and let him be, and besides having Mrs. Hange triple-check him for any wounds that could get infected, it was decided that having a quiet night to mull over the events of the day was in order for him Which he was grateful for, because after surviving a sufficiently awkward dinner between the family where nobody wanted to talk about the blatantly obvious, he was able to stow away to his and Hange’s room, grateful for the peace and quiet.

By the time it was eight o’clock in the evening, Levi was wasted. And _that_ was saying something, especially considering he seemed to have an inability to get tipsy, let alone drunk. Hange had never seen him drunk until today, so she wasn’t sure exactly how to treat him. The sad look in his somewhat hazy eyes spoke for itself though, sending shivers up her spine as she sat next to him on the bed. He held the bottle of whiskey tightly in his hand, only letting go of it to let Hange have a couple swallows.

She gnawed at the bottom of her lip, turning her phone over and over in her hand before finally resigning herself to what she knew would help him. “Hey, I’ll be right back. I’m going to go wrestle the iPad from dad and try to put on some movie.” Levi stared blankly ahead in response.

Her dad wasn’t watching the iPad, but he was sitting in the kitchen either way, scribbling in his notepad. Hange’s father really enjoyed buying cheap yellow stenograph notebooks and writing everything in them, from what happened in his day to grocery lists to actual legitimate short stories.

He looked up at her when she entered the room, setting his pen down and pushing his notebook away gently. “Zoe, can we talk?”

She grabbed the iPad from its stand before sitting down at the kitchen table, the front of the tablet down so she wouldn’t be distracted. The polyurethane coated wood chairs at their dinner table always felt comforting, but her father asking her to talk wasn’t. “Sure.”

“I won’t leave Levi waiting too long, will I?” Her father teased with a grin before abruptly dropping it upon seeing the expression on his daughter’s face. “Tell me, what the hell happened to him? He didn’t speak a word during dinner, he’s all bruised up, and I get the feeling that he has a lot more than absent parents.”

“I don’t know,” Hange answered honestly, putting her head in her hands and closing her eyes. “I didn’t know they would hurt him. He told me after we went shopping today that he was going to go get the rest of his stuff and tell them that he was out on his own. I mean, he expected them to be mad, but he didn’t expect…this.”

Her father sat a moment, mulling over her response. “Can you talk to him for me? Make sure he stays okay.”

“Yeah, of course,” she replied, taking a deep breath and rising from the table. “I’m going to use the Netflix.”

“Mmhm,” he nodded, pulling his paper and pen back toward him. “I just wish there was something I could do.”

When Hange returns to her bedroom, it’s surprisingly chilly. The window’s open, letting in a strong breeze of… white?

She moved to close the window, noticing the wet flakes falling from the sky. She followed a flake down, noticing how it didn’t land on the roof of the ground floor as it should have. Instead, it landed on the head of a boy with inky black hair.

“Levi,” she said in a low voice, poking her head out the window. “It’s cold, Levi. It’s _snowing_. You need to get inside.”

He didn’t respond and only brought his fingers to his lips, making what he held between them glow on the end for a moment before exhaling a cloud.  It was going to be a long night.


	15. snow and whiskey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SAD LEVI SUCKS TO WRITE.
> 
> /writes an essay and a half  
> /is exhausted  
> /writes more fanfic anyways  
> washrinserepeat   
> college life   
> <3

God, he fucking hated nicotine.

He barely felt Hange climb out onto the roof beside him, throwing her heavy duvet over the both of them and cuddling real close to him. He barely registered when she laid her head on his shoulder, craning her neck up to bury her lips on his neck. They rested there, soft and a little cold.

He hated to interrupt a nice moment, but he felt like he ought to say something, as slurred as it might come out. “Didn’t want to… didn’t want to make your room stink. This stinks.”

“It’s okay,” her hot breath on his neck felt good, like she was melting him from this shell. He took another drag. “Talk to me.”

An optimist would say that the whiskey bottle had just enough in it now for a nice glass or two. A realist would say that he’s had too damn much. Levi much preferred the realist side to him, even in a drunken stupor. He handed the bottle to Hange, realizing a little too late that he had absolutely no idea where the cap had gone.

Without hesitation, she downed a large gulp of the amber liquid, her hand flying to her throat as if she could somehow soothe the burning sensation there. She would finish it, he hoped. And buy him some more, he hoped.

“I… I can’t talk proper-ly,” he mumbled. Oh yeah, those were slurred words. The cigarette was getting too short to smoke now. He ground the glowing end to a pulp on the shingles.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I just want to know what’s in your head right now.”

He swallowed, taking what felt like ages to collect his thoughts. “I’m angry. And I’m sad. I’m really sad, Hange.”

She didn’t say anything, but she draped her arm across his chest under the duvet, giving him a loose hug.

“I’m so sad because I tried to be the son they wanted for so damn long, and then they got into the drugs. And the people who pushed me to do well in life suddenly became the spitting image of the example of what I was told not to be,” he snaked his hand over Hange’s body and grabbed the whiskey, polishing the bottle off before clumsily handing it back to her.

Hange sighed as he handed the empty bottle to her. The alcohol was starting to kick in, making the edges of her world fuzzy and sending her head spinning every time she tried to focus on one particular thing. The amount she’d drunk paled in comparison to Levi’s, and she often felt jealous that he was seemingly unaffected by the liquid.

“When we first met, you told me that this kinda stuff… the drinking, y’know… it made you forget yourself. Is that what you’re trying to forget?” She asked. She realized that it might have been a bit insensitive a couple seconds too late, but Levi didn’t seem to care.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. They wanted me to be so _perfect._ Told me I wasn’t personable enough,” he replied with a bitter laugh. “I mean, hypocrites can’t see past themselves, so what do I care?

His eyes levelled, gaining a dull, flat quality. “They started doping when I was thirteen. I didn’t really realize it at first, mom said she was taking some new medication to prevent cancer. I believed her cause she was into that kinda stuff, being real healthy and eating right. She even told me it was naturally sourced from flowers, but refused to give me any ‘cause she said I was too young for cancer. When Kenny started doping, I didn’t really register it as bad either. It was just something they did.

I think the first time I realized that we had a problem was when I came home from school one day, and there was nothing in the fridge. The house hadn’t been cleaned for a week, and Kuchel used to clean daily. I went to her room to ask what was going on, and she was passed out, still had the needles out and everything. I called Kenny and he told me not to call the cops, and keep my mouth shut. After that, the whole dynamic changed.”

His voice broke at the end of that sentence, and in the falling snow and darkness of the night, Hange saw his cheeks wet with tears. Levi’s head followed her hand as she wiped at them with thumb, his lips brushing her finger.

“That’s why everyone thought your parents were angels… they never did anything to make you think otherwise. It was all behind closed doors,” Hange concluded quietly. “Saying sorry won’t help, will it?”

Levi closed his eyes, letting another tear roll down his cheek. His thin eyebrows pushed together, and he sighed. “No, it doesn’t help at all. They disowned me. I’m sad, but I’m glad not to be associated with them.”

“Oh,” Hange gasped before enveloping him in a tight hug once again. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you.”


	16. bed and fathers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello there.  
> thanks for waiting so patiently.

He laid his head on hers, his mind picking up that she had decided not to wash her hair even in the state he was in now. It was okay, though. He didn’t mind her apathy towards her hair when there were more important things to do, like going on Wikipedia binges and doing research.

“We’re going to fall off the roof or freeze, Levi,” she muttered, finally breaking the hug after a couple moments. “C’mon, can you get up? I want you to be safe.”

It takes her five minutes to rouse him from his spot on the roof, and another five minutes for him to clumsily climb through her window. While he takes ten minutes to struggle out of his clothes, wet from the snow, she closes the window tight, draws the curtains, makes up the bed, and even grabs him a bottle of water and aspirin for in the morning. Luckily, not even five minutes pass before he’s curled up on his side under the heavy duvet, his breathing deep and his face peaceful at last.

Hange hit the lightswitch on her way out of the bedroom, plunging the room into darkness.

“Dad,” she asked when she padded to the living room, where the man in question sat, remote in his hand, watching old reruns of what looked like _The Twilight Zone_ with closed captioning on, as to not wake the house _._ “Dad, can I talk to you? Like, an adult talk.”

The television clicked off. “He’s not okay, is he?”

She shook her head, feeling her eyes well up. “No, he’s not. I-I took your whiskey. The stuff you didn’t like much. He finished it. I’m sorry.”

“Come here,” her dad said, holding his arms open in an invitation for a hug. “Don’t worry. At least someone enjoyed it.”

“Enjoyed is the wrong word,” Hange whispered, choking back a sob and diving into his arms. “I’m going to help him. And he’s going to hate me for it.

“Sometimes, the right decision doesn’t feel good in the slightest. And sometimes, people are too comfortable feeling terrible to even imagine a threat to that comfort, even when it sucks,” Hange’s dad murmured into her hair. He hugged her tight, taking a deep breath in. “I think Levi’s been living like this for a long time.”

The tears came freely now, her body shaking with the force of her sobs. “Let me…” she took a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Let me tell you what I want to do. Tell me if this is okay, okay?”

Hange explained, rather calmly, what she wanted to do. Her father stared at her intently, pondering the idea, before finally agreeing that it would be the best choice. “Zoe,” he said, “you’re always going to be my baby girl. But tonight, I admire you. I’m so proud.”

“I just hope it turns out okay,” she said, disentangling from his arms.

She drifted to the kitchen, taking deep breaths now, her feet feeling like jelly and her legs like matchsticks. The home phone glowed bright blue when she picked it up, dialing a short number.

“Um, hello, this is a non-emergency, so, please prioritize an emergency first. I’d like to report a tip. Anonymously, I mean,” Hange took a deep breath, seeing her hand shake in the dim light. “I’d like to report a couple for drug and child abuse, and neglect.”


	17. coffee and bunny slippers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm spoiling you all.  
> Thanks for the feedback on the last chapter. I really appreciate it.  
> I promise it gets better for these two. They deserve happiness, after all.

 

Levi woke up, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His head pounded, and the dim light coming through the curtains and his eyelids sent stabs of pain through them. There were no words to describe just how shitty his body felt; he could only compare it to three days of the stomach flu.

Still, curled up against his back was another body, this one a lot more familiar and warm. It was the only thing that kept him from lurching out of bed to inevitably spew last night’s happenings into the toilet. After a couple years of high school, Levi had learned two things: you had to puke with a hangover eventually, and that Taco Bell was pretty easy to keep down if you got everything mild.

He could see her in his head, tucking him in and closing the curtains. Groggily, he sat up to grope at the nightstand, blindly grabbing the water bottle that sat there (no doubt Hange had put it there) and chugged about half of it. Finally, he opened his eyes, blinking a couple times before they finally focused. He turned his body to look around the room, properly taking it in now, before laying his eyes on the girl in the bed with her body pressed against his.

Holy shit.

Holy shit, there was a girl in this bed with him. A girl who _wasn’t trying to get in his pants._ His mood lifted instantly, although his body didn't. 

“Hange,” he couldn’t help but whisper, giddy.

She opened her eyes, staring straight through him for a moment before glancing up at him. “How do you feel?” She asked, her voice quiet and small.

“Like death,” he replied. “And you?”

“Tired,” she groaned.

“Did you sleep?” He asked, pushing his eyebrows down into a look of concern. “You don’t look like you slept.”

Hange closes her eyes again, her face undreadable. “I was worried about you. I didn’t want you to turn over in your sleep and get sick and choke and die.”

“Oh,” he replied emptily. “Sorry.” Then after a moment, “thank you.”

“S’no problem,” she mumbles. “Gonna sleep a little.”

Levi swings his legs over the side of her bed, feeling his head spin with the quick movement. “Get some sleep. I’m going to get a shower and say hi to your parents.”

“M’kay,” he hears from her as she buries her face into her pillow. He slips out of the room with a pair of sweatpants, boxers, and a tank top under his arm, with no plans to leave the house today. He sticks a finger down his throat before shakily making his way to the shower, relishing in the difference between the bathroom, cold from the snow caking the window outside, and the steaming shower.

The person in the mirror stares at him when he wipes away the condensation there, the circles under their eyes dark and the skin gaunt. It’s been awhile since he’s been hungover. Sure, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but it’s just been awhile.

He pads downstairs, where the smell of fresh brewed coffee is prominent and a welcome scent. He pours himself a cup, taking a sip of it black, and pops a couple pieces of toast into the toaster. The news plays in the background, so he joins Hange’s parents by the couch there, wrapping his hands around his coffee.

“Hey buddy,” her dad greets him with when he looks up from his tablet. “How’re you feeling?”

He shifts his weight. “I could be better.”

“You and I both,” her dad replies. They lapse back into a comfortable silence, the only sounds in the room being the television and the gentle tap of fingers on a screen.

Until the ten o’clock news came on, and Levi dropped his coffee.

“An unfortunate story from the community today… a man and a woman were arrested late last night after a worried neighbor called to alert the police of a potential child abuse and drug use case,” the news reporter informed the camera. “Kenny and Kuchel Ackerman are prominent members of the community, often donating money to the homeless and providing food for the church. When the house was investigated, drugs and paraphernalia were found, and the child in question appears to be missing. If anyone has any information regarding this case, please contact…”

Levi felt like all the blood had drained out of his body. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and by the second, the room felt more and more unfamiliar. Who had tipped off the police? Why? When? It wasn’t because of him, right?

And then all at once, he was furious, because the answer to his questions appeared at the stairwell.

She’s wearing powder blue pajamas, with pants that are slightly too short and one of the buttons on the shirt undone at the bottom. Bunny slippers, too. She looks afraid, for some reason. He’s not entirely sure what she has to be afraid of.

“Levi-“ Hange starts, making her way towards him.

“No,” he cuts her off. “Don’t say it. Don’t fucking touch me. I’m getting my shit and leaving.”

“Levi, it’s snowed out there, you can’t,” she protests.

He pushes past her, taking the stairs two at a time and shoving what little he had unpacked from the bag in her room back in. He hoisted it over his shoulder, moving past Hange’s figure that hadn’t moved, and grabbed his car keys.

“Please don’t leave,” he hears from behind him, making him turn his head. He regrets it instantly; he’s never seen Hange cry, but he almost puts his keys right back and goes to hug her.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he shuts the door behind him, gets in his car, and drives.


	18. hotels and hange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out Vinyl Theater! I wrote this listening to them!

 

It takes him a couple hours before he regrets it, really. It’s when his phone dies and he has no clue where he’s driven, because he took the easiest route to the interstate and just kept driving, that he starts to regret leaving. The lights of the gas station are weak and uninviting, but he still stops there, gassing up and buying some kind of premade sandwich and a Coke. The food is flavorless to him, unpalatable at best. But food is fuel, and he figures the aching in his gut is from _something_.

Except the ache in him doesn’t really disappear with the food. It serves as a distraction, yes, something for him to do with his mouth other than grind his teeth and bite the insides of his mouth, but that’s about it. His mind wanders, flashing through the newsreel, flashing through the faces of the people who cares for him in that house.

The faces hurt too much. He asks the cashier where the nearest clean motel is. It’s four exits away. Back into the cab of his car he goes.

The motel is clean, yes, but it’s dark. It’s dark and clearly meant for lovers, with it’s deep color scheme and fancy polished brass accents. The bed’s sheets are rougher than Hange’s somehow though, a thought that sends pain throughout him again, so he pushes it back and steps into the too-large shower, turning the water on scalding and relishing a pain that _isn’t_ inside of him.

Somewhere between the steps of shampoo and conditioner, he begins to cry.

Everything hurts. His body, his chest, his head, his mind. Between the hangover he’s been trying to ignore all day and the images flashing through his head every fifteen minutes, he just… cries. There is no point to any of it, not one that’s obvious to him, and yet, it makes him feel a little more okay. Just a little.

Hange would like this place, with it’s inappropriate theme. She’d laugh, and call it irony.

And then, somewhere between getting his towel onto his body and flopping facedown onto the bed (for the step between shampoo and conditioner took _far_ longer than average), he realizes it. Quietly, Hange was never trying to hurt him. And even quieter, she was terrified of hurting him.

The realization makes him sob harder. He plugs in his phone, finally. There’s no messages, no alerts. No calls or texts or IM’s from anyone, especially Hange. He’s not quite ready to talk to Hange, not yet. It’s almost a relief, but at the same time, it sends stabbing pain throughout him again.

Levi doesn’t really sleep at the hotel, despite exhaustion keeping him pretty much confined to the too-fluffy bed. Yes, Hange would definitely like this place. If she still liked him, maybe he’d have her here. It seemed more appropriate than her childhood bedroom. It was definitely the type of place for that. But only maybe, because even the thought of Hange right now hurt, let alone laying her. It felt wrong to think about that right now. Very wrong.

His phone dings. It’s her. _Hope you’re okay & safe. Drink some water. _Of course, she’d ask him if he was okay and tell him how to make things better. That was just Hange. For a moment, he feels insulted that she’d even ask if he was okay. But really, it’s just Hange.

He takes her advice to heart. Drinks some overpriced hotel water, then refills the bottle with the tap in the bathroom. Leaves her on read for a solid twenty minutes, before, against his will, texting her back one word: _safe._ He sees her read it almost immediately, then puts his phone in “do not disturb” mode, failing to escape her reply on time: _I’m safe too._

Levi used to be someone with a ridiculous temper. Someone might screw up, mess up something at work, or even walk too slowly in front of him, and he’d be irrationally angry at them until he could finally escape the situation. Living with Hange and her family, although in such a short time, taught him that some things were not worth being angry over. Someone making sure you’re okay? Not worth it, at all. Someone being insensitive? Probably not worth it, if you’re in good company.

So when he rethinks her asking if he’s okay, he can’t figure it out. She asked if he was safe, a completely separate thing from the usual implied question that comes with “are you okay.” The answer? He absolutely was not okay. The two people who had raised him were in jail, he didn’t really have a home, really, and he’d just fucked up one of the few good things in his life.  

One of the few goods things in his life. Hange.

He climbed back into bed.

 


	19. oreos and capri-suns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> survived hurricane Irma! thanks for waiting, loves. 
> 
> the angsty bits are wrapping up. hold on tight!

Petra was a best best-friend. She’d shown up to Hange’s house with a pack of double stuff Oreos and a two-liter bottle of coke, her ears open and her heart full of love. She made quick work of Hange’s mopey self, stuffing her with junk food and painting her toenails a shade of lime green. She even went as far as to reassure Hange multiple times that what she’d done was the right thing.

Still, despite the orange-headed girl’s work, Hange still remained plagued by her significant lack of Levi. She missed him. A lot. He’d viewed her texts, and responded, yea, he was safe. But he hadn’t replied to the okay part. She hoped he was okay.

“Hange, you’ve got to stop thinking about it,” Petra stated midway through penciling her work week in her planner. “He’ll come around eventually, I promise you. I’ve never seen Levi actually like someone as much as you, so I doubt he’s gonna, y’know, let you go.”

“I know,” Hange sighed. “I know he’ll come back eventually. I just worry.”

“What are you worried about?” Petra set down her pencil, tying her hair up.

“I… don’t know,” Hange filled the silence with, flopping against the pillows on her bed. She sat there cross-legged for a moment, thinking. There was a lot she was worried about, really. Levi’s safety, number one. Number two, what he’d say when he got back. Number three, if she’d ruined it all, and number four, what if Petra wasn’t even right, and what if he never returned?

She bit her bottom lip, hard. She must not cry again. Not _again_.

Petra sighed, closing her planner and setting it on the bedside table before flopping facedown next to Hange. She propped herself up with one arm and grabbed Hange in a tight hug with the other, feeling the other girl curl her body around hers, shaking with tears. “I’m sorry,” Hange choked out between sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s like he died,” remarked Petra after some time. They hadn’t moved except for Petra to run her fingers through Hange’s hair over and over, something that would have normally annoyed her, but soothed her in the moment. “You can either spend your time doubting, and feeling like shit. Or you can hope, and maybe it’s blind hope, but it still feels a lot better than doubting. You absolutely know he’s safe. That’s something.”

“You’re right,” Hange mumbled into her friend’s chest. “I don’t like it that you’re right, but you’re right.”

“I’m always right, silly,” Petra giggled. “You just don’t listen half the time.”

Hange looked up in an accusing glare. “You’re right until you’re in a mood to do something stupid. Then I’m the right one.”

“You’re not wrong,” she admitted, and both the girls dissolved into giggles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hErE i Am CoMpOsInG a BuRlEsQuE


	20. a house and a home

Levi’s breakfast is a cigarette or three, because he wakes up too late for the hotel breakfast. He doesn’t usually chainsmoke like this. He likes to think that he’s gotten very good at handling his nicotine problems, considering he hasn’t felt the need to smoke since he met Hange. Of course, now that she’s gone, they’re burning freely.

He scrolls through his phone, aimlessly, unsure what he’s doing anymore. A part of him doesn’t want to go back to the only place he can call home, if they still want him there. Another part of him is screaming, shrieking, to go home.

Safe. He was safe. Kind of. Mostly. Had he ever been really safe?

Yeah, he had. He ground the lit end of the cigarette against the shower wall, extremely aware of the hotel’s no-smoking policy. He’d made up his mind, alright.

Still, despite knowing exactly where he was going, his car took him somewhere else today. At three o’clock, the sun was turning the snow outside into slush by the back door of his parent’s house, only accenting his mood. Bittersweet. Despite seeing the “CAUTION: DO NOT ENTER: CRIME SCENE” tape and official looking paperwork on the front door, the back door opened with ease.

It was dusty in here, like nobody had bothered to dust in a couple weeks anyways. He made his way through his old house like a ghost, through the kitchen (where it smelled like someone clearly had not emptied the refrigerator), to the dining room, where there were still spots of blood on the floor. He vividly recalled his last interaction with his parents, swallowing the lump in his throat.

He hesitated at his bedroom door, knowing damn well that they probably hadn’t bothered to enter it. Still, he entered it, seeing everything still an utter mess from when he had essentially trashed his room in an attempt to grab everything he owned. He wandered to the bathroom, trying the lightswitch, only to learn there was no power. Even then, in the dim light from the window in here, he could see the damage from the last time he had been here clear as day. His eye was a mottled mash of colors that reminded him of raisins, and his eyes had bags heavy enough that even Hange’s thickest concealer wouldn’t even dent them.

Levi shook his head, ripping himself from his thoughts. He dug through the sink vanity, looking for anything that might be useful to take with him. He felt like a looter, although this was still his home, technically. His hands groped around a stiff box, and he pulled it out, letting out a harsh laugh when he realized what he was holding. Condoms. Their gold foil flashed at him, taunting him, although he was satisfied to see the box half empty. He considered himself pretty good at kicking habits, especially because of Hange.

He then wandered down the hall, into the room he’d been barred from since he could remember. His parent’s room was sparsely decorated, with wallpaper that he was pretty sure was original to the house. It also reeked of something sour, something familiar, from that night he met Hange. It made him want to retch, and the deeper he went into the room, the worse it got. He pulled his shirt over his mouth, noticing that this room had obviously been ransacked too, no doubt by police.

Still, despite his aversion to the room, it sent tears to his eyes. He perched on the side of their bed, feeling it creak under him, a sound he was used to hearing at night. The bedside drawers were partially open, and he opened one, turning on the lamp that sat there. At least they still had power, although not for long, probably.

This was obviously Kenny’s drawer, for there wasn’t much here, except for a couple pocket knives and old trinkets from what Levi assumed to be his life. He felt no attachment to the belongings here.

The second drawer was his mother’s, so he skipped that for a moment, going to the last one. It was empty, although it had clearly housed something before. It smelled particularly sour, and had stains of varying colors lining the bottom. He closed it rather harshly.

His mother. Her drawer had a couple lady feminine things covering the contents, which he carefully put aside, no interest in that part of his mother’s life. Under them were a couple boxes. He went for the one that he could guess the contents of easily, although it surprised him slightly to find the little velvet box all the same.

Kuchel’s engagement ring was simple, and Levi had never seen her wear it, only her plain wedding band. It was gold, with a diamond flanked by two smaller diamonds, cut into perfect faceted squares. Not his taste, not Hange’s taste, and certainly not Kuchel’s taste, Levi thought. He set it aside next to the pile of feminine things, pushing it out of his thoughts.

The second box simply held a key. Maybe it once held a necklace or something, but all that was there was a key. He continued onto the third box, a long carved wooden thing that just barely fit into the drawer. The key fit into the lock on this box easily, and Levi held his breath opening it, then exhaled, and sent many pieces of paper fluttering.

He grabbed at them quickly. The first one was a receipt, which he didn’t bother to read. The second was a pink ticket the size of a playing card, for some sort of doctor’s appointment. He dug in the box, feeling his heart sink into his stomach, burning there. Finally, something he recognized: an ultrasound. _Levi_ was penned on the bottom of the photo in fading ink, with a heart next to it. He took a deep breath, going back to the receipt. _3x Pregnancy Test, $2, total $6.42_. The ticket, _Lawrence’s First Choice Family Care_.

Carefully, he put these things back in the box, turning the key again and pocketing it. He returned the items back to their place in the drawer, stacking the box on top of the box of condoms, and at last minute, the ring box too. There was plenty more to go through in the wooden box, but for now, his vision was too blurry for that. He had only one desire, and one desire alone: to get out of this sour smelling, sour feeling house, and to one that made him feel okay.

The sun was setting when he knocked on Hange Zoe’s front door.


	21. him and her

The sun throws Hange’s face into sharp relief against her dark hair, making her feel so much more intense than Levi was already expecting. She’s opened the door slowly, obviously having looked through the peephole, her body screaming hesitance.

“I’m okay,” he found himself saying. “Are you okay?”

She stares at him, her face unreadable. “I’m safe,” she hazards.

He shifts, looking down at his feet and shoving his hands in his pockets. They bump against the lighter in there, although he’s left the cigarette box in his car. There’s one left now.  “I’m safe now.”

“Levi,” Hange whispers. “Look at me.”

Her eyes are shining, although neither of them are strangers to tears in the past couple days. She holds her arms out, her lip trembling, and he doesn’t hesitate to wrap his around her frame. He feels her shake as she cries, and before he knows it, he’s crying too.

“I’m okay,” Hange tells him, sniffing. “I’m okay and I’m so glad you’re home. I’m so glad you came back.”

Levi pulls back from her, grabbing her shoulders firmly and looking at her. “Thank you.”

“What?”

“Thank you for doing something I didn’t have the guts to do. Thank you for being a decent human being. Thank you for being fucking Hange Zoe and being the most selfless, brilliant, and beautiful person, that I’ve ever known. Thank you so much,” he lets out. It feels like a weight has been released off his back, like he can finally breathe. “And don’t you think, for one second, that I hated you. I can never hate you. Angry, yes, furious. But I have never stopped loving you from day one of meeting you, I think.”

She didn’t respond at first, but replied by wrapping her arms around him fiercely and latching her lips to his. Quietly, in barely a whisper, she said, “I think the feeling’s mutual.”

Dinner with the Hange family was eventful, but it felt comfortable. Hange’s mother had seemingly noticed that Levi had come back, and set him out a plate of chicken, as if they weren’t already halfway through dinner, and maybe he had just come home a little late. He hugged her tightly too, before meeting eyes with her dad. They said, “I’m angry at you, but I’m also fond of you, in a weird way,” and yet, her dad hugged him too. It was merry, it was warm, and a chilly, starving Levi was never happier to be home.

In the evening, he appreciates the shower upstairs and it’s borderline awful water pressure more than he ever has before. Halfway through, Hange joins him. Despite never seeing her naked body before, for once, his dick works with him; there is nothing sexual about their experience under the hot water, washing each other’s bodies and savoring the feeling of being together again.

And finally, when they finally lay down to go to sleep, he doesn’t hesitate to join Hange under the covers, wrapping his body around hers and grinning into her hair. It feels good to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my hand actually cramped writing the end of this note to everyone don't binge write 7k words in 4 hours


	22. mother and son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you SO much to the person who sent me a comment saying there was a duplicate chapter posted-- i've got a cold and haven't been paying enough attention.   
> here's an extra long one.

The snow falls thick outside, muffling the world outside and sending a chill through even the warmest people. The sun hasn’t even made an attempt today, and although it’s early, Levi and Hange both agree that it won’t let up anytime soon. At least, she offers, they’ll have a white Christmas.

He thanks his lucky stars that he started dating her for what feels like the thousandth time in the past week, because her family is just as lovely as she is, and has put snow chains on both their vehicles. They still take Hange’s car because it’s a bit higher off the ground, and at the rate of the snow, they’re going to need it for their journey today. Hange makes sure that he has a thermos of hot tea before they leave, and he makes sure that she’s wearing her extra thick coat and scarf today, in a pretty red plaid that brings out the warm tones in her hair.

The car ride there is uneventful, and they don’t talk much, having talked for half the night leading up to this. In fact, the GPS talks more than they do, which is a rarity. They pull up to the center, sign in, empty their pockets and purse, have their carry-in’s checked, and join the many in the waiting room. The prison is a busy place today. After all, it’s Christmas Eve.

Hange holds Levi’s hand the entire time they wait, feeling him squeeze it every time they call a name. Finally, after what feels like forever, they call Ackerman, and it feels like they float over to the little conversation room.

Her first thought of Kuchel is that she was once very beautiful. She looks like a female Levi, although her face is a bit softer, and she carries herself in a much more defeated way than he does. She looks up at them when they enter and Hange can see her physically recoil, as if looking at them is a slap to the face.

“Hi mom,” Levi says stiffly, pulling up a chair for Hange and then sitting in his own. “How’re you doing?”

She doesn’t say anything, but Hange can feel her eyes boring a hole into her. “Hello, Kuchel.”

“You’re the one who put me here.” Kuchel says, prompting Hange to lift her her head and look her in the eyes. “You’re that Hange girl.”

“I won’t deny it,” Hange responds, surprised at how cool her tone is. “I’m the one who’s housing your son.”

“My son…” Kuchel trailed off, laughing bitterly. “Levi, imagine your nicotine withdrawals. But imagine them making you want to kill yourself because, god, how is it possible to feel this shitty? That’s how I’m doing, Levi. You’ve done a good lot for me.”

Hange narrowed her eyes, feeling fury spark in her. “Levi didn’t know you were here until he saw it on the news, ma’am.”

“Oh, maybe he loves me a little, then,” Kuchel retorted. “I can see how much you do.”

“Mom, I went through your stuff at the house. I know, tampering with evidence, but fuck it, that was my house too,” Levi blurted out. Hange raised her eyebrows at him, for this was news to her.

“And what did you find?” his mother asked, intrigued.

He pulled the wooden box and the velvet box out from under the table, where it had been placed by a worker of the prison before they entered. Both had been tampered with, but what did he expect?

Levi started with the smaller one, opening the ring box and taking it out. Hange stared at it, floored, and confused. What the hell was he doing?

“I thought, because I don’t know what’s going to happen to the house, that I ought to save this. You’ll be happy to know it’s going to a good cause. It doesn’t suit you, either,” Levi explained. “Although, it’s not going to you, Hange. I’m not quite sure what it’s going towards, but it’ll be good.”

“Don’t let Kenny see that,” Kuchel groaned. “I told him I lost it on the cruise we took after the wedding. It’s all real though, the metal and the diamonds. I’m kind of glad to get rid of that.”

“We’re not seeing Kenny today,” Levi explained. “He made it pretty clear that he didn’t care about me, and I’m fine living without seeing him again.”

“Did you ever love him?” Hange asked quietly, staring down at her unadorned hands.

“At first. I loved him a couple months after the wedding too. He was rich and I was not. Hasn’t Levi told you?” Kuchel replied, fidgeting with the cuffs on her hands.

Levi’s eyes hardened. “Mom was a prostitute before she met Kenny. I think they met at a party that she was escorting at, or something. He gave her enough money to cover the cost of abandoning her job and gave her a night off. It feels stupid, but it makes sense, why I’m not Kenny’s kid.”

“I think you’re the kid of the guy I was escorting that night, to be honest. He was a regular, but he would have made an even worse father than Kenny. Kenny made it so that guy could never talk to me again, but because you’re probably from the business, you pretty much stand for everything he hates,” she supplemented. “There is no father on the birth certificate, though.”

“Makes sense,” Hange shrugged.

“Birth certificate,” Levi muttered. He set the ring box aside, putting a key into the wooden box and opening it. He set the contents on the table in front of them: an ultrasound, a pink ticket, a receipt, a plastic pregnancy test, and several dozen photos of a much younger Kuchel and Levi. Hange drew in a sharp breath.

“Mom, I’m here for two reasons today. Neither of them are because I love you, because really, I don’t,” Levi started. “I’m here to inform you about the future of that ring, and I’m here to ask you a question I want you to answer honestly, okay?”

“Alright,” his mother said, staring down at the photos. She clumsily picked one up, her handcuffs rattling as she moved.

“Mom, do you still love me?” He asked, staring at her.

She paused for a long moment before setting the photo down and pushing it away from herself. “I did.”

Hange let out the breath she was holding, and silently began putting the contents of the box back into it.

“I did, so much, at first. You were so cute,” Kuchel’s eyes glistened, although she didn’t meet her son’s. “And so tiny. I wanted to love you, so badly. But Kenny hated you so much, and it made it so hard for us. You started school, and I realized how much I missed not fighting with him. I guess I just fell out of love.”

“That’s what I needed to hear,” Levi said, locking the box and standing up. “Thanks for your time, Kuchel. I appreciate it.”

“I don’t even know who you are anymore, Levi. How can I love you if I don’t know who you are?” Kuchel asked to their backs. “I’m proud of you, and I always will be, but I can’t love you.”

“Merry Christmas,” Levi said, giving the room one last glance before he shut the door. The officer outside who guarded the room gave them a sympathetic glance, and before they knew it, they were back in the car, the boxes in Hange’s lap in the driver’s seat and Levi sitting blankly in the passenger.

Levi reached in his pockets, silently taking out the cigarette box and lighter. His thumb was just on the wheel of the lighter when he felt the unlit cigarette leave his lips. He’d never dropped a cigarette like that.

No, instead, Hange was holding it, and holding another hand out patiently for the lighter. He gave it to her reluctantly, and she chucked it in the center console of the car. She then set the boxes on the floor of the car, opened the car door, put the cigarette on the ground, and ground it to smithereens under the heel of her boot. She dusted it off with her hand, got back in the car, and then looked at Levi, her eyes calm and steady.

“You are done killing yourself over them,” She states firmly. “I can’t even list the chemicals in a cigarette, and I’m a damn chemist. We are going home, I’m making you some chicken noodle soup, and you’re going to be with people who love you no matter what. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says numbly. “It hurts so much, Hange.”

She bites her lip, leaning over the center console and kissing him. “It will hurt for awhile. It may never stop hurting. But you have a safe place to hurt. You will be okay. _We_ will be okay.”

“Okay,” he whispers, feeling tears fall down his cheeks. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Put on your seat belt. We’ll be home sooner than you know,” Hange says reassuringly. And, as if he wasn’t lucky enough for the gift that Hange was to him, he believes her. His eyes close as Hange shifts from park to reverse to drive, and he’s lulled away by the gentle stop and start of the car as she navigates through the snowy roads.


	23. birthday and christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a note for those who are sex repulsed, there's a very vague nsfw scene here, but i didn't want to write a smut scene for this one. additionally, sex is by no means an "endgame" in a relationship

Sometimes, Levi thinks he can’t be surprised by Hange anymore. Really, he should have expected it, but he’s still surprised when she wakes him up on Christmas morning by bouncing on the bed until he wakes up groaning and threatening to tie her down. She laughs, calls him silly, and tells him it’s Christmas.

Right. It’s Christmas. Levi hasn’t had one of those in a long time.

Hange drags him downstairs, but not before he steals the comforter from the bed and wraps it around his frame, still unsure about having a bare chest around the rest of the family. It just seems impolite, on what’s supposed to be a religious holiday, of all days.

“Close your eyes!” She says to him halfway down the steps, then guides him down the other half. “Don’t peek.”

“Okay, Hange,” He says tiredly, although he can’t help but wonder what she’s done.

He hears her moving around quite a bit before she finally says, “okay, open.”

“Happy birthday, Levi!” Screams the room as soon as his eyes open, and he has to grab the guiderail on the staircase to steady himself. On the kitchen counter is a small assortment of gifts, but along with it is a messily frosted chocolate cake, and two shiny golden balloons that spell out the number eighteen.

“Thank you,” he finds himself saying. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“C’mon Levi, you deserve it,” Petra says from the group. She and Hange giggle, having obviously stood up all night to make the cake, by the look of the chocolate frosting on Hange’s face.

“You should open mine first,” Hange’s mother says in a stage whisper, which evokes laughs from all of them, Levi included. He makes his way over to the counter and asks them to bring the stuff to the kitchen table, where they all pull up chairs and sit, watching him open gifts.

He’s gotten a glass electric kettle from Hange’s mother, a bottle of good quality whiskey from her father (who, begs in a note, not to drink it all in one go again), a shower of different types of candies, chocolates, cookies, and other such delicacies from Petra, and three different things from Hange: a key, presumably to the house; a shiny new multitool, and a miniature vape.

“Really?” He asks in regards to the vape, toying with the box in his hands. “Why would you get me this?”

“Petra’s idea, really. I don’t want you smoking anymore, and I know how you hate doing it anyways. You can stop without getting the withdrawal feelings by putting lower and lower strength liquid in each week. I got you a kit,” she explains. “After awhile it’s just water and glycerin, no nicotine.”

It takes him a moment to come around to the idea, but before he knows it, he’s set the vape aside and is hugging Petra. “Thank you,” he tells her.

“Can we eat cake later?” He asks, glancing over at the Christmas tree, where there are plenty of gifts still yet to be unwrapped. “I know you two put a lot of effort into it, but it’s not just my birthday, you know.”

Hange doesn’t need a second prompt. “Yes! Absolutely!”

In addition to his birthday presents, Levi finds he’s also been involved in the Hange family Christmas, much to his surprise. He tells her parents multiple times that they shouldn’t have, but they shake their heads and smile at him. Surrounded by torn gift wrap after an hour of going around and having each person unwrap something, he’s grinning from ear to ear, and her parents finally explain.

“Levi, we, um, we’d like to say something,” Hange’s mother starts. “We thought about adopting you before your eighteenth birthday.”

He sets the gift in his hands down, turning to look at them. His heart thuds in his chest, almost painfully.

“We decided against it, because by the time the paperwork went through, it wouldn’t be worth it,” Hange’s dad continued. “However, we’d like to let you know, even if you and Zoe part ways, you’ll always be a part of this family and welcome here.”

“We don’t care if you’re Ackerman or Hange. We just care that you’ve made our daughter so happy, and we have no other idea how to thank you for that,” her mother finished.

“I love you guys,” Levi states plainly, before adding, “Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ve been the nicest people to me, and I’m happy to call you family.”

“That’s all we could hope for,” Hange’s mom replies, relaxing against the sofa again. They share grins, grins that last for the rest of the day, though the daytime cooking and the evening Christmas dinner and right up ‘til everyone is off to bed.

For once, Hange does not shower with Levi, which is a slight mystery to him, but he shrugs it off. Sometimes she doesn’t like to when she’s “particularly feminine,” as she calls it, so he simply assumes it’s that. She goes ahead of him though, prompting him to shower alone for once, lost in his thoughts.

At his old house, for the longest time, it had only been a house. It had only been a place to sleep and a place to grab food, but really, it hadn’t been home. After coming to Hange’s place, there was never a day that he didn’t feel at home, and it took him having the two extremes to realize just how much he had changed in the past few months. The shower was warm, but his heart was warmer.

He toweled off, deciding against putting pajamas on, knowing full well that he’d just be climbing into a bed that was probably already warmed by Hange. He wrapped it around his waist, holding his old clothes in one hand, and made his way to her room. He opened the door, and was immediately assaulted with a “wait!”

“Should I close my eyes for this one too?” He asked, partially amused, partially tired from the antics of the day.

“Nah. Too much anticipation. Lock the door behind you, won’t you? I want to turn on the lights instead,” Hange explained, although cryptically.

“Okay,” Levi cautiously made his way through the pitch black room, reaching the bed and tossing his dirty clothes in the hamper at the foot of her bed. “Er, I’m ready, for whatever you’re doing.”

The ceiling fan light didn’t turn on like it usually did; instead, the lamp next to Hange’s bed did, giving the room a fuzzy, warm glow. And then he saw her, and today, once again, his dick worked with him.

She was wearing maroon lingere. Barely there lace covered her chest in a bra that fit very well, and the same lace covered her bottom, although it seemed very skimpy. She’d let her hair down, and maybe even put on some eye makeup.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, taking the sight of her in.

“I wanted to do something special for your birthday,” she said shyly. “Except I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m pretty sure you have an idea.”

“Can I touch you?” He asked, standing up to face her. She nodded, and he wrapped his arms around her in a kiss, exploring her back and her butt and everything in between. At some point, she dropped the towel around his waist, and fumbled with what was down there, while he swiftly unhooked her bra.

“If you want to stop, at any point, we can,” he told her in a low voice, guiding them to the bed. “Also, protection, important,” he said, fumbling with the drawers next to her bed and taking out one of the little gold foils.

“Same goes to you too, you know,” she said, shrugging out of the bra and inching the underwear down her hips. He laughed, taking those off with the same ease that he had the bra.

The initial act hurt for her more than she’d anticipated, and they had to take several moments to rest. Levi talked to her the entire time, never taking his eyes off her eyes, and making it the best thing he possibly could, despite the obvious.

They lay there for a bit afterwards, basking in the intimacy of the moment. Beads of sweat covered their bodies and the low light of the lamp blurred out any imperfections the two of them had.

“Happy birthday, Levi,” Hange whispered. “I love you.”

“Thank you,” he whispered back. “I love you too.”

 

Fin.


	24. epilogue.

“Petra, could you come zip me up?”

“Only if you feed me an Oreo.”

“You’re probably not supposed to eat Oreos before your wedding.”

“Hush. I can eat Oreos before my wedding if I damn so please.”

The date was October 26th. It was a cool autumn day, right before the leaves fell off the trees in their conversion to winter, and they still painted a backdrop of reds, oranges, browns, and golds. It was in a converted barn that Petra and Mike had decided to have their wedding, and rooms had been made off to the side, for bathrooms and dressing rooms and storage and such. Petra, Hange, Nanaba, Historia, Hitch, and Rico all sat preparing themselves for the day ahead, drinking sips of champagne from thin flutes and laughing like they were in high school again.

Petra zipped up her pale yellow dress, and Hange smoothed the skirt out. She checked to make sure her heels were on properly (yes, they were) and her hair was secured before she delicately grabbed an Oreo and fed it to her best friend, making sure to hold her hand under her chin to catch any crumbs before they lodged themselves in her dress.

“Are you ladies all good in here?” Came a familiar voice, and Levi’s head poked itself through the door that protected them from the rest of the world. “Can I come in?”

“Just don’t tell Mike what my dress looks like,” Petra replied, her voice cheerful. “And don’t eat my Oreos.”

“Oh, trust me, I know better than to even glance at the Oreos,” Levi said teasingly. “You look gorgeous, and that’s all I’ll say to Mike.”

“Thank you,” Petra blushed, smiling at Levi. The two had become incredibly close, thanks to the bond between Hange and Petra. In turn, Levi and Hange alike had widened their friendship-family. 

“And you,” Levi turned to face Hange, who gave a tiny curtsy. “You look pretty good too.”

“Says the most dashing man in the room,” Hange replied. It was true; his black and white suit was simple, but crisp, and it highlighted his best features. His cheeks were rosy and his eyes sparkled with a happiness that had taken some time to grow. He even looked a bit taller in black, although Hange still had to lean a little to kiss him.

Historia snorted between coats of mascara. “He’s the only man in the room.”

Hange rolled her eyes. “Definitely the most dashing. Subject to opinion when the rest of them are around.”

“I want to stay and socialize with you girls, but we’re on a schedule, and you all know it. Any last minute issues before we get started?” Levi asked, business as usual.

“We’re good, I think,” Nanaba said, looking down at her pale pink shoes. Every bridesmaid had the same dress and shoes, but in different colors that matched the season. They formed a lovely little harmony, almost like candlelight.

“Yup,” Petra confirmed.

“Then come get married,” Levi said to her, grinning. “Miss Ral, I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Yes, Mr. Ackerman,” Petra did the best curtsy she could with all the fabric around her.

The wedding itself went very smoothly. The converted barn was bathed in white fabrics and bunches of pastel colored flowers, in wooden folding chairs and high ceilings dotted with twinkling lights. Being the maid of honor, Hange made sure to highlight Petra’s love for Oreos in her speech, and how she’d always be her best friend, but she “sadly” had to donate her Oreo-feeding, Capri-Sun sipping duties to Mike. Everyone laughed at that, but only a few knew just how true it would ring. After all, Petra was _really_ into Oreos.

“Isn’t this place lovely?” Hange asked Levi after the ceremony over dinner, cutting her chicken parmesan up into more manageable pieces. “It’s so clean and welcoming.”

“Mmmhmm,” Levi replied, his mouth full of dinner roll. He chewed, then swallowed. “I really like this venue. We’ll have to look into it. I'll ask Mike about it in a couple weeks."

They looked around the venue, then at the newlyweds, then at each other. Hange’s eyes trailed down to the sparkling ring on her left hand, a quiet little engagement, a quiet little rumble of thunder among Petra’s storm. Yes, Kuchel’s ring had gone to a good cause after all: the payment for this one. It was not large or particularly flashy, but it suited Hange well. She squeezed Levi's hand under the table, earning herself a squeeze back. 

It had been nearly six years since Hange and Levi first met. Between a broken home and a broken boy, there had been a lot to work through with the two. And now, sharing an apartment, sharing a life, and living, instead of just surviving, they could finally relax. 

Together, there would be many more happy years. 

 

The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so damn much to everyone who kept by this fic, and who commented, gave kudos, and gave me tips on when I screwed up. you're all so lovely. thank you so much for reading.   
> love,   
> rose
> 
> find me on other social media as @coldcocoamilk (just say you're from ao3!) (twitter, tumblr, discord, & etc.)


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